Hits most of the targets...
> Wild Target
3 stars (out of 5)
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Cast: Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt, Rupert Grint, Rupert Everett, Martin Freeman, Eileen Alkins
Rating: (M)
In the movies, the world is full of lonely repressed men who work as top-notch assassins.
Without fail, their carefully constructed lives begin to unravel when they find themselves contracted to kill a beautiful woman with whom they promptly fall in love.
Now you can either treat this seriously or you can attempt to play it for laughs as in Wild Target (Rialto and Hoyts).
Bill Nighy is Victor Maynard, a third-generation assassin who has been kept in the family groove by his terrifying mum (Eileen Alkins). Now that she has been moved to a nursing home, he finds himself considering other options. Sadly, the best he can come up with is to teach himself French.
All this changes when freewheeling thief Rose (Emily Blunt) is presented as his next job.
She proves harder to knock off than his average target so it takes him a day and a night to finally get her into prime killing position and just as he is about to strike, another hit man emerges from the shadows. In a matter of seconds he recasts himself as her protector and his life starts to get interesting.
None of this is particularly startling, but you can go a long way in a film with charm. So for Wild Target, even when you are going "yeah, right," it is never a chore to watch.
Best thing: There is a depth of acting talent to this but Martin Freeman playing a rival hit man is quite disconcertingly creepy.
Worst thing: The jokes it does have are funny, it just needed more of them.
See it with: A Bill Nighy fixation. He really is wonderful playing these emotionally strangled types.
- Christine Powley.
