Wild Target (2010)

One of my all time favorites.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

As Good As It Gets

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy) is a lonely professional assassin trying to please his demanding mother (Eileen Atkins) in the family business. Rose (Emily Blunt) is a thief who cons Ferguson (Rupert Everett) out of a large sum. Ferguson hires Victor to kill Rose but he becomes fascinated by the relentless thief. Ferguson sends his thugs. Victor kills one and rescues Rose. They are then rescued by vagrant Tony (Rupert Grint) who shoots the other thug. She hires Victor for protection thinking he's a P.I. and together with Tony, they go on the run. Unbeknownst to them, they move in next door to Ferguson who then hires the second most expensive assassin Hector Dixon (Martin Freeman).Bill Nighy and Emily Blunt are trying their wacky best to be funny. It's an odd group along with Rupert Everett. There are some fun moments but mostly I want to love this trio more than I actually do. These are all good comedic actors but maybe a wacky comedian would be more helpful. It's a light screwball comedy with a few chuckles but lacks the big laughs to drive the unconvincing thriller.

Not that the premise sounded original, I decided to give this film a shot one morning. A hit man falls for his target and in the process has a strange sort of awakening while forming the family he never had time for in his younger days. The actors all do a fine job but the script is so aimless and ill thought that this quickly becomes unwatchable. At first I was expecting a dark comedy with a modicum of violence but after the first act it's something else entirely, some sort of sickening love story with a message about family that no one can relate to.There's about three things going on here besides the main story; Victor's crisis of self, his relationship with Rose, and his mentorship of Tony. This would be difficult for all but the most of astute of film makers to competently put together and outright fails in Wild Target, even if it is meant to be a comedy. From the get go there's so much focus placed on Victor's lack of a mate as well as his lack of a successor that once the three main characters show up on screen together it's painfully obvious where the story is headed. The issue is that the "how" involved in this process is dull and uninspired. The "why" is so thin that I'm left scratching my head over what exactly these three are doing in this strange configuration. To be brief, this arrangement is never developed. There's not a lick of characterization to suggest why the three of them have the need to form this familial unit so quickly. Sure, the circumstances give reason to the formation of the unit but there's never any believable or fleshed out reasoning for the persistence and continuation of this "family" and the roles that each adopt.The relationship between Rose and Victor is perhaps one of the worst on screen couples I've ever seen. She goes from hate to love literally over a foot massage and the chemistry just isn't there. Again, there's so little character development beyond "Victor needs a wife" that the relationship isn't convincing. Not once did I root for them to get together nor did I feel any joy when they did. There was no heart or passion or any connection with the audience. Nonetheless, it was quite obvious the two would end up discussing his weight from the very first few minutes of the film.Perhaps more outrageous than this mess of a love story is the forced inclusion of Tony, the homeless nobody who wants to find his place in the world and get a little bit of love. Where the necessity for this story element arose from is bewildering. He serves no place except for another good guy with a gun and his dynamic as an adopted apprentice is fuzzy at best. Moreover his extension into the familial unit as the child is stretching reality entirely too far. It is so difficult to understand his role in any realistic context that I'm left feeling disconnected and consequently see his position as confusing, bizarre, and trivial.Wild Target is about as close to nonsense as any film I've seen. It gets a 2 only because the technical aspects of film making were tolerable. I'm not sure where all the positivity for this film is coming from; those describing it as "hilarious" must not have been as distracted as I was by the lack of cohesion and motivation.

What an utterly pointless film. I don't remember when i saw something more disjointed, where character development is assumed and clichéd, where the stars are called on simply to do their thing, without bothering to put together a strong script.The funny bits, aren't funny, the "I wonder what thats about they will explain it later?" bits are obvious and forced.The actors themselves, are fine, i pity they had to wallow through this muck. Terrible directing. Terrible editing.I am shocked this is currently rating at 6.8 its a total boredom fest.If only I could get me 2 hrs back, id have got nails hammered into my feet instead, would have been more enjoyable.Worst thing for me is I've seen the leads in other movies, where they played more or less the same roles, and they were awesome. Goes to show how at the mercy the actors from the creative team on a movie, and this team... wow. So rubbish.

Bill Nighy is a high-priced, mother-dominated, methodical and lonely assassin. He's hired to kill mischievous kleptomaniac Emily Blunt after she rips gangster Rupert Everett off with a forgery of a self-portrait by Rembrandt. Predictably, he ends up protecting her instead. Rupert Grint (from the HARRY POTTER series) is along for the ride as an apprentice. Old-fashioned crime farce is a remake of a French movie from 1993 (when the ideas might have seemed fresher), has a few scattered laughs, but overall the high quirk factor is debilitating. With Eileen Atkins as the wheelchair-bound mother, Martin Freeman as a rival assassin (with very white teeth), Gregory Fisher, Rory Kinnear and Geoff Bell.