Wild Target

Well, that was weird.

What we're essentially looking at here is a peculiar cross between Leon, and
a British, Ealing-style comedy.

Bill Nighy plays Victor Maynard, who's the best in the business, utterly
ruthless, and also incredibly stuffy and henpecked by his mother. He
lives an incredibly solitary life, and only gets out of his house to kill
people or to visit his mother.

This changes when he is assigned to kill Rose (Emily Blunt) and can't bring
himself to do it, because she's basically very perky and cute (as well as being
a screwed up kleptomaniac). So rather than kill her, he elects to protect her,
bringing along Tony (Ron Weasley), who's essentially an idiot kid who gets
embroiled in it all, who Maynard decides to take under his wing as a protege.

Meanwhile, the guy who wanted her killed in the first place (Rupert Everett)
engages another hitman (Martin Freeman) to kill the lot of them.

In structure, it's very like Leon, in that there's an exciting bit at the start
where the whole situation goes pear shaped, a domestic idyll in the middle
where everyone gets to know each other, then another exciting bit at the
finale. There's something actually a little creepy about the whole thing, as
Maynard and Rose are deeply weird and broken in their own special ways, neither
of them generally able to have normal relationships with people, as they get to
like each other in a very strange and fucked up way.
Bill Nighy is great as a really stiff necked weirdo with no idea about human
relations at all. Emily blunt is quite fun as a cute con artist and thief who's
practically no better, trusting no-one. Rupert Grint really
is just Ron Weasley who's just wandered into the wrong movie and decided to go
along with it. Martin Freeman plays very well against type, also, mixing his
trademark "oh for heaven's sake" eyeroll with a great turn as a sadistic
killer.

There's something a bit off with the structure and pace, somehow. I
occasionally fidgeted and thought "oh, get on with it", though that might have
been down to the fact I'd been mainlining sugar during the trailers. But
otherwise, a good old fashioned British comedy, with a delicious swirl of
macabre, which didn't blow me away, but highly enjoyable nonetheless.