Starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, and Morgan Freeman.

Anger is power. This is the lesson learned by Wesley Gibson, downtrodden office drone and cuckold. Trapped in joyless routine, our hero learns that there is a better way to live: by meeting strangers and shooting them.

Since this is the movies, Morgan Freeman provides soothing yet authoritative exposition. Wesley is not a dweeb, but the heir to a legacy of assassination. He was born into the Fraternity, a secret society that for centuries has rubbed out people identified by an oracular loom. (I’m rooting for the sequel to revolve around a ruthless toilet or ill-tempered stapler.)

Wesley (James McAvoy, in serviceable American accent) will do anything to get out of writing sales reports for his boss, so he puts aside moral qualms and agrees to join the Fraternity. Cue hazing/training montage. Angelina Jolie plays Wesley’s foxy trainer, named Fox. Angie got whittled down to a pair of lips on a razor blade for this one, yet she retains the Tomb Raider air of casual lethality and supercompetency. Watching her draped over the hood of a sports car, firing machine pistols and steering through the windshield with her feet, there’s a sense that she actually does this sort of thing all the time, between adoptions.

McAvoy suffers more bumps and bruises as the raw, naive Wesley, who is beaten into shape through actual beatings. Yet it is he who has the easier character to play. Who among us has not, upon occasion, desired to tell his boss to fuck off, to smash swaggering ninnies, and to kill people in ways that, thanks to director Timur Bekmambetov, are really, really cool? I suspect that the original Wanted comic makes more sense than the mumbo-jumbo that this film serves up as plot and dialogue, but for dealing with rage fantasies, it’s a better evening out than group therapy.