My friend Zach and I love stupid action movies. We loved “The Rock.” We loved “Air Force One.” I won’t claim that we loved “Con Air,” but we enjoyed ourselves immensely when we went to see it in the theater. But in recent years I’ve had a hard time getting truly excited about big action movies, with the exception of the Bourne films. The fact is, adrenaline-pumping, ridiculously entertaining action movies are few and far between. Maybe it’s because CGI and other special effects technologies have become so commonplace that few movies employ them in clever and original ways; it’s hard to get excited about something you’ve seen 50 million times before, and I’ve seen at least 50 million on-screen car crashes. There’s also the recent glut of mythology-laden action movies, comic book films such as “Hulk” or thought-provoking science fiction films such as “The Matrix.” I liked those sorts of films, but they take themselves so darn seriously. After watching them, I don’t feel like driving really fast, making illegal U-turns and shooting at passing cars with a semi-automatic weapon, which is what I want from an action movie.

But after seeing the preview for “Wanted,” I had high hopes. This movie looked like a violent cartoon, and I mean that in the best way possible. I don’t know what casting director decided that Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terrence Stamp and James McAvoy belonged in the same movie, but this person is a genius, and not just because I’ve been nursing a secret crush on James McAvoy ever since watching him an “Atonement” last year. I was interested to see how McAvoy would transform from a sensitive British soldier into an action star, and even more interested in watching Angelina Jolie train him to join her secret clan of global assassins, a process that, among other things, involved punching him in the face a lot and making him figure out how to leap over a bridge while sprinting across a speeding train in downtown Chicago. “Wanted” also marks the Hollywood debut of Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov, whose science-fiction vampire films “Night Watch” and “Day Watch” were huge hits in Russia. I saw “Night Watch” when it played in Albany a few years ago, and it was actually pretty entertaining. OK, now you’ll never take anything I saw seriously again, but that’s my opinion, for what it’s worth.

“Wanted” has one of the more absurd plots in recent memory, and again, I mean that in the best way possible. The movie had me hooked from the get-go, when it announced that 1,000 years ago a group of medieval weavers formed a secret society of assassins that still exists today. We flash forward to the present, and eventually learn that the assassins now hang out in Chicago, that Morgan Freeman is their leader, that they still weave, and that they receive orders about who to kill from a magical loom. I mean, really. I’m cracking up just writing the synopsis; I can’t imagine what happened when the screenwriters decided to make a magical loom the centerpiece of their stupid action movie. Or perhaps they didn’t see any humor in it, which is even funnier.

James McAvoy is a pathetic office drone who hates his boss and his life and his best friend, who is sleeping with his girlfriend, whom he also hates. He takes anxiety medication — always a sign of weakness and ennui in a movie like this — and muses that the only thing he cares about is the fact that he doesn’t care about anything at all. That’s before Angelina Jolie, in full dominatrix-killer mode, finds him, informs him that his father — recently murdered — was actually the world’s best assassin, and orders him to shoot the wings off flies at gunpoint. When he succeeds, he realizes that he has a special gift for assassination, just like his father, and decides to fulfill his destiny and become an assassin. His big challenge: learning how to bend bullets with his mind so that they can shoot around corners, and other troubling obstacles.

Anyway, the movie is wall-to-wall action, and although I can’t quite place it on the same pedestal as “The Rock” and “Air Force One” — there were a few occasions when I wanted to shout “Slow down!” and “Be Quiet!” at the screen — it certainly is enjoyable, right down to its ludicrous, over-the-top but also operatic conclusion. When I left the theater, I found myself yearning to join a secret order of assassins, despite my belief that murder is basically wrong, even if you’re taking orders from a magical loom. The actors are all in fine form. McAvoy makes a splendid action hero. His transformation from office drone to skilled assassin is totally believable, if anything can be said to be believable in a movie like this, and Jolie is terrific as well. She’s a good actor, and I don’t want to typecast her, but is there another actor on earth better suited for the role of a glamorous assassin? Well, maybe Brad Pitt, but of course you can watch the two of them play assassins and run around and shoot at each other in the equally ridiculous and entertaining “Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

When I got home from “Wanted” I dug up some reviews to see what the cognoscenti had to say about the film, and the funniest tidbit came from Anthony Lane in “The New Yorker.” Here’s a snippet of what he wrote (and you can find the full review here). “What is it like being Timur Bekmambetov? No artist should be confused too closely with his creations, but anybody who sits through ‘Wanted,’ Bekmambetov’s new movie, will be tempted to wonder if the life style of the characters might not reflect or rub off on that director. How, for example, does he make a cup of coffee? My best guess, based on the evidence of the film, is that he tosses a handful of beans toward the ceiling, shoots them individually into a fine powder, leaves it hanging in the air, runs downstairs, breaks open a fire hydrant with his head, carefully directs the jet of water through the window of his apartment, sets fire to the building, then stands patiently with his mug amid the blazing ruins to collect the precious percolated drops. Don’t even think about a cappuccino.”