Melbourne International Film Festival: Wild Target

by Ernesto Zelaya Minano 11 August 2010 04:33 Filmink Festival Coverage

A pretty humdrum effort despite the talent involved.

Wild Target is a remake of a French film from 1993; this little piece of trivia will probably only be relevant to hardcore fans of European cinema. And despite being helmed by comedy veteran Jonathan Lynn (My Cousin Vinny, The Whole Nine Yards), a man who knows his way around silly screenplays, it turns out to be very underwhelming.

Bill Nighy plays Victor, a hitman and one of the best in the business, who lives a lonely existence in London carrying out jobs and learning to speak French. His latest target is Rose, a con artist whom he decides to save after becoming smitten, with the help of Tony, a slacker teen who just happened to be around. All three end up on the run from dangerous criminals, while bonding, in true comedic fashion, over one-liners and pratfalls.

The cast is first-rate, featuring many well-known British faces. Nighy gets a rare chance to headline a film as the laconic, soft-spoken Victor, basically playing the straight man (and thankfully having nothing to do with the scenery-chewing vampire of the same name he played in the Underworld movies); Emily Blunt makes for an adorable female lead (with a penchant for randomly stealing things) and Rupert Grint from the Harry Potter movies is basically playing a more dense and idiotic version of Ron Weasley. Rounding out the cast is Rupert Everett as a mobster, Martin Freeman as a rival hitman (who, with his plastered-on haircut and weird toothy grin, looks eerily like a plastic doll) and Eileen Atkins as Victor's gun-toting mother.

This group of actors do their best to make the movie likeable; it would be unbearable otherwise. For a dark comedy, it doesn't go far enough, opting instead for a sappy and somewhat creepy romance between Blunt and Nighy - their age difference is too noticeable and they come off more as father and daughter than lovers. It's also a jumble of unresolved subplots: Everett is built up as the villain and exits the film in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment halfway through, and even though Victor wants to train Tony as his successor, this is first introduced as the movie is about to end. Underwhelming and wasted potential are terms that apply here.

There are still traces of the trademark British humour, made up of the usual dry and sarcastic dialogue we've come to expect. But despite some funny moments, Wild Target is pretty ordinary, the kind of film you'd watch on cable late at night and forget all about afterwards. It's especially disappointing considering that the British are usually so good at making crime films.