Much like Charlize Theron, Angelina Jolie is an actress that’s just as comfortable kicking ass in the action genre as she is delivering powerhouse dramatic performances in awards season favorites, something that’s served her very well over the last two decades.
Jolie scooped an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Girl, Interrupted back in 2000, and has since added three Golden Globes and two Screen Actors Guild prizes to her trophy cabinet. Just a year after landing Oscar gold, though, she tried her hand at being an action hero in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and turned out to be pretty good at it.
In the years since, she’s put her skills to solid use in blockbusters like Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Salt, The Tourist, recent thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s upcoming Eternals, but arguably her best ever action film is now blowing up on Netflix thirteen years after it was first released.
Wanted stars James McAvoy as an office drone who discovers that he’s got the potential to be an elite assassin, and he finds himself taken under the wing of Jolie’s Fox and Morgan Freeman’s Sloan. It’s a big, loud, dumb, bombastic and hugely entertaining R-rated romp, one that hauled in over $341 million at the box office and drew enthusiastic reviews from critics and fans alike.
There was talk of a sequel for a while that eventually came to nothing, although director Timur Bekmambetov recently teased a wild idea that could see the next installment in the proposed Wanted franchise unfold entirely through Screenlife. Admittedly, that’s probably not going to happen, but at least fans can revisit the opener at the push of a button on Netflix.