With the immensely scary and gory vampire thrillers Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2006) to his credit, it is no surprise that Russian director Timur Bekmambeton’s first English-language film is off the scale in intensity. So much so, that it has departed from other films based on comic series and earned itself a ‘R’ rating. There’s plenty of violence and destruction in this exciting thriller with a killer twist, but there’s also a story about refusing to live in fear and seizing control of your life.

What is a surprise is that 29 year-old James McAvoy (Mr Tumnus in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and the doctor in The Last King of Scotland) was chosen to play the hero. As Wesley Gibson, he is a meek pen pusher who suffers continual panic attacks when near his intimidating boss and is unable to confront his girlfriend about her infidelity with his best friend. Everything changes when Fox (Angeline Jolie) steps into his life and he becomes ‘wanted’ by a group known as The Fraternity (even though females are members as well) of assassins who need Wesley to avenge his father’s death.

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Jolie, as always, is gorgeous and lethal, and McAvoy buffs up impressively to become the action hero. The questionable part for me was everyone’s allegiance to Sloan (Morgan Freeman) who issues the directives for assassinations based on a thousand-year-old belief about bumps woven into cloth. The fraternity of assassins has an awful lot of collateral damage as they ‘maintain stability in an unstable world’ but it’s an exciting ride, right up until the very end.

Rated R, directed by Timur Bekmambeton