This. Movie. Rules.

Wanted is an unholy mess of a movie. It features a ridiculous defiance of the laws of physics, an over-the-top edge, and moments that make you want to jump out of your seat to high five a buddy. It's high energy, testosterone-driven fantasy and was everything Hitman didn't have enough of. You expect a certain amount of idiocy out of a "guy"/popcorn movie, and this movie doesn't disappoint.

Sadsack office worker bee Wesley Gibson (Atonement's James McAvoy) hates everything about his life. The meaningless routine, his cheating girlfriend, his leech of a best friend, his boss—nothing seems to be in his control. Enter the heavily-tattooed Angelina Jolie (whose butt we hadn't seen since Beowulf, but what guy movie would be complete without gratuitous nudity?), the assassin known as Fox, who disrupts his life with a legacy he didn't know he had.

"Your long-awaited destiny to join us." --Sloan (Morgan Freeman)

His father, whose gifts Wesley has inherited, was a premier assassin, a member of a secret society of good assassins, The Fraternity, which his killer is out to destroy. These good guys get their targets from the Loom of Fate, the targets' names needing to be interpreted from the cloth spit out by the loom. Okay, maybe this plot works better as the comic book, written by Mark Millar.

"Insanity is wasting your life as a nothing." --Sloan

Wanted is this year's entry for "we want to be like The Matrix &ellips; except different"—sort of The Matrix as a revenge movie—with Angelina as Trinity, Sloan as Morpheus, and Wesley rounding out the Trinity as Neo. Wesley begins his journey locked into a life of repetitive minutiae, the tedious ordinary, suffocating under the mediocrity of his days, wasting his talents. He sees signs all around him—in fact, everything in this movie tells a story, from newspaper snippets, to store signs, to flying keyboard keys, to the tattoos—that there is more to life than he's been led (or been deadened) to believe.

"This is not me fulfilling my destiny." --Wesley

Wesley's journey finally kicks in once he has his end of self moment which leaves him lamenting "I'm finding it really hard to care about anything these days." He recognizes the "shit life" that he has, and that he has been essentially living a lie. The identity he thought he had was a false one, so intricately built up yet meaningless that he's left thinking that "I don't know who I am." He needs someone to come alongside him, point to the caged lion trapped inside him and provide a key to unlock it. Because as Pekwarsky (Terence Stamp) eventually tells him, "Your father wanted a different path for you to go your own way."

Wesley: What do you repair? The Repairman: A lifetime of bad habits

The journey of discipleship doesn't have to begin with having your face smashed in, as much as that would cut to the chase of matters. Wesley wants to step into his father's shoes rather than continue to piss his life away. His life becomes about finding a connection to his father, a new way of life, and a Master-Teacher for that life. Wesley decides that "I have to prepare. I have to become his student" in order to become a true apprentice.

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