How about everything that would make at least a halfway decent movie?: "Wanted"

I like dumb action movies. You know this. Or do you need me to pontificate on "The Last Boy Scout" some more?

Here's the thing, though. I didn't think "Wanted" would be that dumb ... or all that bad. I distinctly recall seeing the trailers for both this and "Jumper" several months ago. Both trailers were OK, but I knew "Jumper" would blow. "Wanted?" Eh, could be OK, and it even made my list of movies to see over the summer -- the lucky half-dozen that would be worth my preciuous time should I steal away from the redheads. Alas, "Wanted" was the one big movie I missed.

Wait ... hold the "alas." Like I said, the movie wasn't good. Thank goodness I didn't pay a dime to see it, scoring a free pass to a new theater opening that was showing second-run movies. Turns out they were second-rate, too.

Our story: After a bam-pow intro showing what will be the movie's signature effects, we meet James McAvoy as an office drone whining about his life in truly annoying voiceover. Along comes Angelina Jolie, who says she's an assassin, and that his daddy was an assassin, and that another top assassin killed his daddy and is trying to kill him. And here Jimmy just wanted some pills to take his mind off his wife getting boinked by his work buddy.

We soon learn about the Fraternity, a brotherhood of assassins trying to hunt down the rogue assassin who killed Jimmy's dad. Jimmy apparently has the touch and is trained to go after this guy. Between this story and some of the slo-mo special effects, comparisons to "The Matrix" aren't far off. Just sub out dodging bullets with making them curve, and voila! Rip-off time.

Of course, things aren't as they seem, and our hero finds himself facing some tough choices and calls to action. While the big twist was the only halfway decent thing about this movie, everything else was bad enough that I audibly laughed multiple times. And nobody was telling jokes.

Let's see ... the narration undermines any drama and action. Every actor has done better stuff by far. So good in "The Last King of Scotland," McAvoy really is slumming here. Hell, his character is named Wesley. Wesley? Our hero ... Wesley? Ugh. Jolie is mailing it in, getting by on her smolder-smolder thing and throwing us an a$$ shot -- but no t!ts ... all respectable now. But because she's named "Fox" and has a bunch of tattoos, we're supposed to be ga-ga for her. Not this time.

Most disappointing of all is Morgan Freeman as Jolie's boss. For a while, he's just doing the Morgan thing, which is a bummer in itself. Really? More of this? Can't you even try? But then he goes in another, sillier direction, and I just about threw up my hands. I mean, Morgan has done some mediocre stuff, but this is definitely down there.

What's that, you say? Who cares about the acting in an action movie? Well, I agree. Too bad, the action sucked, too. Aside from a couple of semi-clever car stunts, all the whiz-bang is pretty dumb, including the slo-mo gunshots. Throw in the inane backstory on this assassins group and how they get their targets -- it's stunning, really -- and this movie is not far from a total failure. Remember, I saw it for free. And yet, I definitely paid a price.