Why I Liked... Wild Target (2010)

(Dir. Jonathan Lynn Starring: Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt, Rupert Grint)

 A really cute plot.

Yeah, that’s what I liked about this film. Bear with.

 Bill Nighy needs to be in a film, starring as a professional, slightly quirky hitman, but for it to be better than Wild Target. Because really, he deserves so much more.

I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of this film, but it either needed to up the quirk and kook to eleven, or crank back the other way to utter bloody gore and heads and knees being blown out by bullets while waxing philosophical. Which, when I think about it, just sounds like a Quentin Tarantino film. Um...

Basically, it all happened way too quickly without being a fast-paced film. Victor Maynard (Nighy) is a bit of an oddball in regular society because hey ho, he’s a professional hitman, trained by his mother since he was a little boy. That’s bound to mess anyone up, and for him it just makes him a tad anti-social and unable to comprehend social norms. But whatever, come on-how many professional killers function all that well in “regular” society anyway?

Moving on, Rose (Blunt), a beautiful thief shows up and-hang on a second. Can I just talk about how much I detest how she’s described in the synopsis as a ‘beautiful thief’? And yes, fine, I’m using their own words, but come now-wouldn’t thieves find that somewhat offensive? And uh yeah, women as well, I mean. Um. Right.

Just in case you didn't realise, she's really, really pretty.

Dismounting from that high horse quickly, let’s get onto what else went wrong with this film-Tony (Grint-completely underused) enters the scene as a...well, just as token character, really. Who reacts to a violent situation with a certain amount of panicked level-headedness that attracts the attention of Maynard, who eventually asks Tony to become a sort of apprentice after proving his muster. While still being a little dimwitted, but with a grasp on the subject of killing anyway. Which is a plus when you’re looking for someone to train, I suppose.

So here we are-we’ve got this little “family” of killers and thieves, and what else happens? Not much, to be honest. Director Lynn attempted to bring in other conflicting and equally quirky characters, but it just didn’t seem to work out-he spread out the quirk a little too much, I felt. It needs a certain amount of concentration to work out the way he must have wanted it to.

Also? The film became pretty damn predictable. And not even on my scale of predictability where I can see a cliche coming from miles away, but on the scale of the average cinema viewer. Oh god-not that I’m diminishing people who go to the cinema, but let’s face it-I wouldn’t be writing here if I didn’t have a certain obsessiveness that others didn’t. Or even a certain amount of narcissism... I digress. Despite a really cute plot, the rest of the film just couldn’t deliver-Rose was a flat character, relying only on her looks, Maynard was completely underdeveloped, and Tony, again, became the sidekick for shits and giggles.

Which all just added up to me being somewhat annoyed.