In Norwegian artist Jason's graphic novella I Killed Adolph Hitler, the titular "I" is a dog-faced hitman-for-hire, who sells his talents to anyone who'll pay for them: jilted lovers, angry employees, anyone with a grudge. It's plentiful yet unfulfilling work, but it exacts a toll on his relationship with his girlfriend, eventually driving them apart and sending him into the time machine of a crazy inventor with one goal in mind. It's an absolutely brilliant story, unafraid to delve into darkness -- wetwork is so common in the book's Berlin that it isn't unusual for these anthropomorphic animals to witness a few point-blank headshots while taking a pint at the pub -- but also surprising and heartfelt in a quiet and subtle way. The quest to kill history's greatest murderer brings the hitman and his girlfriend back together, and the irony of that isn't lost.

If going back in time to kill Hitler raises very few moral flags, it's because he's already been tried and found guilty by history. In the world of Timur Bekmambetov's Wanted, based on the comic book by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, life is pretty cheap as well, but there is no factual guarantee that the people who are going to get whacked actually deserve it. You gotta take it on faith.

Which is merely one of the reasons Wanted is the most bizarrely reactionary film I've seen in a long, long time. Here's a précis: Wesley (James McAvoy, minus the goat legs), emasculated by his harpy girlfriend and obscenity-spewing female boss, finds self-actualization by joining an ancient order of assassins, forgoing sex (there's no indication that he gets it on with mentor Angelina Jolie) and turning his body into a weapon for the purposes of killing other people on the orders of... a loom. That's right, a loom. That imprints names. In binary. (In binary!) Mythological allusions have never seemed more stupid.

Sure, in one sense, it's a power fantasy, like the thousands that came before it. But unlike, say, The Matrix (which, whatever you want to say about it, roots its fantasy in a rebellious, fight-the-power community) or Fight Club (which casts aspersions on its own self-actualization-through-violence story), Wanted, for most of its running time, seems to buy into its own nonsense. We're expected to see Wesley as some kind of Campbellian hero, when it's clear that he's really just a guy who was lucky enough to be the son of a talented assassin and whose sense of entitlement is so overwrought, he (in what might be the year's most sickening scene) kills a train-full of bystanders in his attempt to avenge his dead father.

I suppose all of the above might, might be tolerable if Bekmambetov were interested in the craft of telling stories. Unfortunately, he has the sensibility of an On The Lot contestant, happily throwing a thousand ideas of "cool" shots at the screen without a single clue as to what to do with them. Occasionally, he'll hit upon a nice image, such as the silhouettes of two unconscious bodies inside the bright windows of the aforementioned train, but more often than not, it looks like a thousand monkeys working with a thousand copies of Maya. There are jokes in the movie, but they aren't really funny -- the office scenes with Wesley's boss are supposed to be the comic highlight, but all they do is make it clear that no one working on the film had ever set foot in an office, let alone heard of Human Resources. Finally, it's supposed to be a big plot twist that the assassins are actually bad guys that Wesley must take down, but it only takes a micro-second of thought to see through the dubious proposition of assassinations leading to order instead of chaos.

Millar's comic avoids this pitfall by coming straight out and announcing that, yes, the protagonist is a villain, and no, he's not going to apologize for it. Reading it after seeing the movie, the forthrightness of its intentions is, at first, a relief -- villains acting like villains and enjoying it. But pretty soon, it becomes apparent that Millar has no idea what to do with the concept. What could have been, at the very least, an interesting examination of the different villainous motivations -- or as the Ambush Bug RPG adventure "Don't Ask!" put it, different reasons to say "bah!" -- it becomes just a loose frame for a very typical slugfest, albeit one that reads like a chronicle of a thirteen year-old's eeeevil D&D campaign, or Irvine Welsh. Once Wesley goes from nebbish to sociopath (which takes all of one issue), the character starts wilting. There is literally nothing left to reveal about him, other than who he's going to blow away. The concept itself starts to collapse under its shaky construction -- it's not really clear what these villains actually do now that they secretly rule the world. This leads to the rather strange plotline, where the story's villain, Mr. Rictus, wants them to reveal themselves to the populace, regardless of whether that invites heroes from another dimension to invade. It's ironic that this horrifying character chooses life and meaning while the young buck who opposes him chooses stasis and (metaphorical) death.

If I were to rank one over the other, it would be tempting to give the prize to the comic -- it's certainly paced better, and it has a Bizarro lookalike named Fuckwit. But then, in the last five minutes of the movie, something happens that suggests that the writers (Michael Brandt & Derek Haas and Chris Morgan) were going for a Verhoeven-esque subversive take on Millar's story the whole time -- it explains the self-centered hero, it explains the ridiculous loom, it explains the awful train scene. But if I'm not wholly convinced, it's only because it seems like Bekmambetov wasn't in on the joke. For while Millar's Wesley triumphs in the end, taking his place at the big table of villains, the film's Wesley ends up penniless, in a crappy shack next to the El, brandishing a rifle and pathetically ranting about how he's in control.

What does Bekmambetov do? He films it like a victory lap.