WILD TARGET

A very British failure. You would expect director Jonathan Lynn to be able to engineer more laughs than he does here. He’s the man behind the marvellous My Cousin Vinny and was a co-writer for Yes, Minister. Yet there’s not a laugh in the whole film – what went wrong? Lynn even managed to rope in some fantastic British talent, young and old – Rupert Grint, Emily Blunt, Martin Freeman and Bill Nighy. The presence of such respectable actors in this thing only serves to increase the sense of disappointment. What attracted them to such a dull uninventive script - how did this thing receive funding - what quality control was there and the most important of these rhetorical questions: why does this film exist?

It can’t be because the people behind it believed themselves to be in possession of an engaging or original story. We’ve seen it a number of times before: an aging hitman on his last job falls in love with the mark. Not only have we seen it before, but we’ve seen it done much better – just consider this year’s The American. Ironically, that film works because of its slow burning, patient, dare I say British sensibility. Wild Target on the other hand plays mostly for laughs without actually providing any.

Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy) is part emotionally stunted mommy’s boy and part ruthless hitman on the verge of retirement. His last target is Rose (Emily Blunt) a manipulative con-girl who has a habit of weaselling her way out of dangerous situations. This triggers a drawn-out sequence where Victor trails the unknowing Rose through the streets of London whilst presented with a variety of obstructions and distractions which prevent him from doing his job. At one stage he believes he has her cornered in a changing room. He pulls out a silenced-pistol and fires three quick shots into the cubicle. We hear a yelp of pain through the curtain and the camera pans out to show Rose walking away, having left the cubicle from the other side. Accidental murder: hilarious.

The chase only serves to somehow endear young Rose to Victor, who finds himself unable to finish the hit. He vows instead to protect Rose from the hitmen that will be sent after her when news of his failure spreads. The film strains to introduce Tony (Rupert Grint) to the proceedings, who is set-up as a kind of apprentice figure to Victor. Unfortunately he cuts a completely extraneous figure – he has no character arc whatsoever, learns nothing over the course of the film and fails to develop in any way. For evidence of his complete superfluity see the overly-smug last scene where you can’t help but wonder – what is he still doing here? This isn’t so much an attack on Rupert Grint, who I like, but more so on the script which introduces characters without granting them a personality or any natural conclusion (see also Rupert Everett’s character).

The relationships between the three central characters are also problematic. You never believe in the burgeoning romance between Bill Nighy (60) and Emily Blunt (27). At all stages the characters just appear to be going through the motions. The script demands that Victor falls for Rose so he does. If Lynn didn’t believe the ‘why’ was important here, he was mistaken – in the case of May-November relationships such as this you cannot simply account for things on the basis of an inexplicable physical attraction. On what level is Rose attracted to Victor? Is it an intellectual or spiritual attraction? Despite having sat through this film, without invoking the Electra complex, I can honestly say that I have no idea. This is to say nothing of the awkward father-son relationship between Victor and Tony. The nadir of this affiliation is reached in the unspeakable ‘bathroom scene’ where Victor, confused by his feelings for Rose, confesses to the naked Tony that he’s worried he is growing attracted to him.

On a more positive note, Martin Freeman who is so adept at playing the everyman (Tim in The Office, Watson in Sherlock) is given the opportunity to do something a little different and manages to shine almost as much as his unnaturally white teeth in his role as a toothy thug-for-hire. Rupert Everett also has fun in a rather limited role. It’s a shame then, that the main players Nighy, Blunt and Grint are so wasted in this film. It has the feel of a John Cleese or Rowan Atkinson vehicle – perhaps in the vein of Clockwise or Johnny English and yet it isn’t as good as either of those two (average) films. The whole thing just feels dated and it is held back by an unimaginative cliché-ridden script. If the British film industry is to be pulled out of its slump its produce must be much better than this. Yet, there is still hope for the future – see The Disappearance of Alice Creed a dark, twisty gem of a film and evidence that there are people at work in the British film industry who are capable of making great films.