“Wanted” will inevitably be compared to such stylized antecedents as “The Matrix,” “Fight Club” and the films of John Woo, as Fox nonchalantly prostrates herself on one of those speeding locomotives or coolly teaches Wesley to shoot a pig carcass by bending the bullet like Beckham. That’s precisely the problem with “Wanted” _ it’s ultimately a movie about other movies, satisfied in upping an already overmannered ante rather than redefining the genre on its own terms.

Scottish by birth, McAvoy adopts the convincing, fey cadences of an entitled American kid, but even his blue-eyed charm can’t make Wesley a sympathetic character. Jolie, on the other hand, embraces her role as one of contemporary cinema’s great objects, using stillness, her sculptural face and her wraithlike frame for maximum, almost synthetic impact. Few actresses working today deploy themselves with such icy self-awareness. In every frame she seems to be cocking an eyebrow at the audience and saying, “I know, I can’t believe I’m this beautiful, either.” She brings high gloss to what is essentially a brutalizing piece of pulp trash, and if that seems to be at odds with her meticulously cultivated image off-screen, it also serves to remind viewers that Jolie is canny enough to know that the big money doesn’t lie in sanctification quite yet.

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