Wild Target (12A) 2010 – 97 minutes

Wild Target is a short but highly amusing British and somewhat eccentric, comedy written by Lucinda Coxon, directed by Jonathan Lynn and based on a 1993 French movie of the same name.

The premise is straightforward. Middle aged bachelor, Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy) has inherited the family business and leads the solitary life of the professional assassin. Like his father before him, he is cold, calculating and ruthless, leaving nothing to chance and isolating himself in an artificial world of order, routine and cleanliness; a world without feeling or emotion, lest they distract his focus and attention. But while trailing Rose (Emily Blunt), his next intended victim, something deep inside him, long forgotten and long ignored, begins to stir.

Rose is a small time con artist whose latest scheme – the sale of a forged painting - has swept her way out of her depth and straight into the path of Victor. Touched by her beauty, sensuality and spontaneity, she is everything he is not and, much to his confusion, he is unable to complete his assignment instead becoming her protector.
Together, Rose and Victor – who pick up joint-smoking, drifter, Tony (Rupert Grint) en route - flee London to avoid the rather sinister attentions of a replacement assassination team ultimately finding themselves in Maynard’s peaceful, clean but utterly soulless, country residence.

The characters make the most of a simple storyline their interaction good, particularly given their divergent characters. Nighy is excellent, tight, taut and sexually neutral, hermetically sealed emotionally like the plastic dust covers systematically covering his furniture. Blunt is equally good; confident, sensual but at times touching and vulnerable, emotionally needy in her own way. Grint, is their foil; incompetent and accident-prone but unintentionally helpful and even keen to become Maynard’s apprentice. Grint is competent enough, but he now needs to consider future roles carefully if he is to avoid becoming typecast as the stereotypical, bumbling buffoon.

The line between comedy and tragedy is very fine and here it is crossed by each of our trio on their involuntary journeys in self awareness. Maynard’s realisation of the futility and emptiness of his existence – never more acute than when listening to teach-yourself- French CDs in bed late at night ; Rose hiding her insecurities behind short term relationships and her kleptomaniac tendencies; and Grint himself, the lost lamb in search of its parents. Director Jonathan Lynn, perhaps better known for Nuns on the Run (1990), cleverly underplays this element – it is, after all, a comedy – but they nevertheless provide a powerful backdrop to the comedy.

Verdict
Amusing, touching and very funny in parts. Definitely worth seeing. 7/10.

Dick Morgan
July 2010