Wild Target: Movie Review

Wild Target: Movie Review

Wild Target
Rating: 6/10
Cast: Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt, Rupert Grint, Eileen Atkins, Martin Freeman, Rupert Everett
Director: Jonathan Lynn
The tone for this film is set with the opening sequence.
Bill Nighy, dressed in a suit and sporting a dodgy looking mo, walks into a building. Seconds later as a man falls from a great height, Nighy briskly walks off.
Nighy is Victor Maynard, a 54 year old life long assassin, who's hired to take out Emily Blunt's Rose, a con artist who rips off a local gangster played by Rupert Everett.
But after Maynard fluffs the initial attempt on Rose's life, the gangster sends in his goons to finish the job - and Maynard.
Things get even more complicated when Maynard runs into Rupert Grint's orphan Tony as he's about to kill Rose. Terry ends up saving all of their lives and the trio's forced on the run until it all blows over.
Wild Target is a quirky style farce which channels early Ealing comedies. There's dry humour aplenty to begin with and clearly something a little different to start off with.
Nighy is mightily impressive as Maynard; his unmoving expression and poker face give some of his actions a more comedic feel. Along with his tall slender frame and suit, at times, he feels like John Cleese about to launch into the Ministry of Silly Walks. He's starchy and stiff which makes his eventual thawing a little more plausible - although once again, Nighy gets to dance (it seems to be the law that in most of his films, he gets to boogie.)
Emily Blunt and Rupert Grint offer good solid support - Blunt's Rose is a mischievous impish thief who doesn't realize until too late the trouble she's in. And Grint brings a bit of humanity to the orphan who's taken under Victor's wing.

The problem with Wild Target is that despite the talented cast, this feels a little too farcical (albeit very funny in places) to be completely successful. It doesn't offer anything radically new in terms of story and gags (an intelligence lacking hitman eats pot pourri mistaking it for a snack) and because of that, it doesn't soar as much as it could.