Review of Wild Target (1993) by Alex D — 20 Nov 2010

I walked into Wild Target expecting to see a very dark, clever british comedy and which is was what the film delivered in its first half, however the second was something quite different. The second half of the film messed with the consistency of its overall tone going from a dark clever british comedy, to a loud, predictable,american style action/comedy, similar to The Killers and Mr and Mrs Smith. However despite saying this, the film may have been trying to become a satire in its second half of more serious movies in the genre, such as Leon The Professional.

What else annoyed me about the film was some dialogue coming off as very forced and many scenes seemed to serve no point what so ever to the story or further character development. One example of this is Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy) confessing to Tony (Rupert Grint) that he may have homosexual feelings towards him, whilst Tony is naked in a bath tub and stands up to ask Victor what he thinks of his penis. This scene particularly annoyed me because Victor Maynard had been portrayed as a father figure to Tony, teaching him "the tools of the trade", never suggesting sexual feelings and throughout a majority of the film Victor seems to have strong feelings towards Rose (Emily Blunt).

Despite all my criticism of the film, I generally quite enjoyed it. The film was very funny in its dark and often slapstick style humour, with likeable characters, a decent story line and a very clever final scene.

Although Wild Target is not as good as many other films in the assassin/ dark comedy genre, but it is very well worth a look if your into this sort of thing or just looking for a fun time at the movies. 6/10.