"It's a lot of fun. There's some decent comic chemistry between the three leads: and this is Grint's first film since Harry Potter 3 that didn't make me want to lob him out the window."
Robbie Collin NEWS OF THE WORLD
"In Jonathan Lynn's film, the cast is near-perfect; Bill Nighy as the priggish Victor and Emily Blunt as the amoral, but delightful, Rose are particularly good. There's also some delicious villainy from Rupert Everett. If not better than the French original, this re-make is equally good and equally funny."
David Stratton ABC AT THE MOVIES
"It is absolutely delicious. I loved this film. I had such a good time with it. That nod to the French, because when you first meet Victor he is learning French. He's sort of like into: he's such a Francophile, even though he goes there to kill people. It's just done in such a deliciously French way, actually. And what is amazing is not that the Brits remade it but that the Americans didn't."
Margaret Pomeranz ABC AT THE MOVIES
"Never less than hilarious: crafted in the classically deadpan British style; the movie’s a grand, quick-witted entertainment, a throwback in the best, most welcome sense. The movie, though, belongs to Mr. Nighy. The actors infuses the prim Victor with just the right hint of a fun-loving wild child hidden beneath the rigid surface. The best thing to be said for "Wild Target": Peter Sellers might have happily made it."
Robert Levin CRITICS NOTEBOOK
"Jonathan Lynn is the director of such high-concept/low-quality comedies as "Nuns on the Run" and "Clue" (aka the Cluedo movie), and anyone who has seen those will know what to expect from "Wild Target", an extremely ropey remake of Pierre Salvadori’s jocular, 1993 French hit."
David Jenkins TIMEOUT LONDON
"There have been a lot of black comedies about assassins lately: there have been a few just this year; but Wild Target may be the first one to contain genuine laughs. A comedy about assassins that’s actually funny. A nice, sprightly little film with good actors and a lively soundtrack."
Stephen Whitty THE STAR-LEDGER
"In Anglicising director Pierre Salvadori's 1993 French original, Lynn and screenwriter Lucinda Coxon have created a rich, colourful and intricately mannered comedy, brought to life with wonderfully wry performances across the board. Nighy and Blunt deftly handle the film's broad range of sardonic to farcical comedy. Nighy is a British national treasure. It's devilishly good to see him taking the lead as Victor Maynard, an austere, ruthlessly precise assassin."
Alice Tynan FILMINK
"If you like your “hit man” movies, it’s a good time to be going to the cinemas in Australia this week. Bill Nighy nabs most of the laughs with his suave, sarcastic, sophisticated character. It reminded of his standout performance in The Boat That Rocked. Rupert Grint isn’t too bad either."
ABC RADIO BRISBANE
The Inside Story
Producer Martin Pope ("Lawless Heart" starring Bill Nighy) discovered the story of "Wild Target" through his friend, Philippe Martin, a fellow member of European producers network ACE (Ateliers Du Cinéma Européen), who had made the original French version of Pierre Salvadori's comedy some fifteen years earlier. "He showed me the film, and I thought it was hilarious. I then showed it to some friends, including the writer, Lucinda Coxon, who I had worked with before, on "The Heart of Me". She's an extremely amusing woman, and we had made quite a sad film and we thought, "right, next time around, we want to make something funny. I'd made a number of films on the Isle of Man, and so I showed the film to Hilary Dugdale at Isle of Man Film. She shared Lucinda's and my enthusiasm and so we were able to develop the film with them. It's been great as Hilary and her team are such enthusiastic and positive partners. Added to that it meant we were developing the film just as Steve Christian, Marc Samuelson and Andrew Fingret were putting together CinemaNX, one of the key financing companies in Britain, so we were able to work with them too, right from script development." "I've only ever had the video to watch, which made it a very different, a very curious process for me, because I had to generate a script from the film," award-winning playwright Lucinda Coxon explained. "Pierre Salvadori has a very particular eye and not to work with that would really be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's an emotional plausibility: we believe the emotional trajectories of the characters; even though they all behave horribly, a huge amount of the time. But you care passionately about what happens to them and whether or not they're alright in the end, so you're just finding those tonal balances." Pope says that once they had a script, "we got Jonathan Lynn involved, which was extremely exciting, because he's based in Los Angeles and hasn.t worked in Britain for twenty years. He's made some fabulously funny and joyful and entertaining films and we're really delighted to have brought him back to Britain, doing a British comedy. It's astonishing that, after the huge success of the award-winning TV series "Yes, Minister" and the films he's directed, that he hasn't done more in Britain. But I think he is quite choosy. He likes scripts which he can see how to make funny and we very much wanted someone who understood comedy and how to bring out the best in the comedy performances." Cambridge University law graduate Jonathan Lynn had seen the French film ten years ago and enjoyed it. "I read Lucinda's screenplay and I thought she'd really done a very good job of anglicising it, but it still had some story issues and things that I wanted to get into. I gave Martin and Lucinda my notes and, to my surprise, they agreed with all of them and said we should go forward from there. Bill Nighy had expressed some interest at that point and that was the other reason why I was interested. The work on the script went on, as usual, right up to the first day of photography. I don't think we changed anything of any consequence during the shoot." "What Jonathan brought to the further development of the script was really exciting and intriguing and added lots to it," says Pope, who graduated from Oxford University in 1982 with an Honours degree in English Language and Literature. "I've known Bill for ten years and worked with him on a number of different films. We gave him the script early on and he said 'that is entertainment. that is a sophisticated comedy.' It really appealed to him." "It's a really rare thing. Any good script is rare. And it's beautifully written," Nighy said.
"It's beautifully dry and funny and really smart. Everything that's supposed to work, works. It's tender and funny and deeply stupid, which is good fun, hopefully, for the audience." His co-star Emily Blunt, who in 2001 won the Evening Standard Award as Best Newcomer for her performance opposite Dame Judi Dench in Sir Peter Hall's production of "The Royal Family", is equally enthusiastic. "The characters are so substantial and eccentric and layered and real and I think that is always good cause for an audience investing more in them, and therefore finding them more appealing. It's a very nuanced script." Three time Laurence Olivier Award winning actress Eileen Atkins agrees. "You can pick it up and open it anywhere and it's very dry, very clever and very subtle. I know it sounds silly to say subtle when you're killing people, but there is a great subtlety to what goes on. This was done with such wit that I knew it was something that I could go and see myself and completely enjoy. You can accept the killings in this because it really is very funny." Martin Freeman (who appeared with Nighy in "Love, Actually" and "Shaun Of The Dead"), also had a positive response to the script Lucinda Coxon ("The Echoing Grove") produced. "It did immediately appeal. Partly, because it's different for me: it's a different thing to be playing, it's not something that people associate me with. And also, mainly, because I just like the story and I like the writing. You can read a script and there's something that's very different for you, but if it's not well-written, or the story's bad, then you still don't want to do it, because you don't want to be in something bad. I don.t have that many scenes in it, but they're fun scenes and they're fun to play and it's not something that I do all the time, so that's a real attraction. It's quite a unique little journey." With the script and director and leading man in place, the search began for cast and crew. Emily Blunt ("Dan in Real Life" & "The Young Victoria") had played opposite Nighy in 2005, when they both won Golden Globes® in the title roles of Stephen Poliakoff's, "Gideon's Daughter". "They just spark off each other, they're great friends," says Pope, a former producer at BBC Films. "He was delighted when we suggested this to him. We sent the script to her and she replied in four days, she read it and thought it was hilarious. I don't know whether it's true, but one of her agents said, 'we've been searching for the right comedy for her for ages and none of us could agree on what it would be.' Emily's very choosy about what she wants to do, and she just really loved it." "Rupert Grint was Martin's idea," Lynn remarked. "He organised that and I thought it was inspired when he suggested it and I still do." For Pope, it was an obvious choice. "There aren't that many young men of twenty who can do the sort of role that he's doing and so successfully and also be a megastar." "I love Tony because he's just such a nice guy, sees the good in everything, he's really optimistic, a really likable guy. Obviously, all the guns appealed to me quite a bit. I thought that would be quite fun. And all the action stuff. It all seemed really cool and good fun to do." Rupert Everett ("My Best Friend's Wedding" & "St Trinian's") was suggested both by Lucinda Coxon and Lynn for the part of the ruthless crook and art-lover, Ferguson. "The most appealing aspect of it was that I was offered it on a Monday and it was starting a week later, and I'm very indecisive. I had to say yes or no to doing it, so I said yes! I like Jonathan very much and I've talked to him a few times about other things. I really admire him, as a writer and as a director and he's a curious type of person. We nearly worked together before."
Lynn's choice for Victor's elderly, homicidal mother was Dame Eileen , with whom he had acted thirty years previously. Atkins confessed: "I had taken over a part from Bette Davis and they'd got lots of marvellous actors who all thought they were going to be doing a movie with Bette Davis. She dropped out fourty eight hours before and they got me instead, which was a bit of a come-down." "I'd asked her to be in the only film I'd ever made in England, "Nuns On The Run". Unfortunately, she couldn't or didn't want to do it. I don't know which," the director recalled. And what did she tell Lynn when she was offered a part in "Wild Target"? "Oh, I do wish I had done "Nuns On The Run"!" Atkins is a longtime admirer of Nighy and was thrilled at the opportunity to work with him again. "I'm going to be quite honest and say that I'd go and see anything that Bill Nighy was in. Anything! I would do anything for Bill, quite frankly. I wouldn't be playing his mother: because I'm not old enough to be his mother; if I didn't absolutely adore him and think he was totally clever. This is the second time I've played his mother, so I've done it twice for him. I'd do it a third time too!" Gregor Fisher, star of TV's "Naked Video" was suggested by Bill Nighy after they played together in "Love, Actually", for the role of the cast as the loveable, but hapless henchman Mike. Filming "Wild Target" was a schedule of two halves: three weeks shooting in London and three weeks on the Isle of Man, which was always going to be hard; although as Jonathan Lynn explained: "It was an absurdly short time for this film. And without a crew as dedicated as this crew was, we could never have done it. They were just spectacularly good and never complained. They were ready for anything. And the same with the cast. I'd never worked on a film where every single member of the cast, without exception, was properly prepared, knew their lines, turned up on time and then gave good performances. I've never come across that before. The only part of it that wasn't fun was just trying to get through every day in time." "Filming in London is extremely expensive and complicated and difficult. It's tough, but then, on the other hand, we did have a big scene in Trafalgar Square, and Trafalgar Square doesn't exist on the Isle of Man," Pope points out. "On a Sunday morning, we shot a scene of Emily Blunt bicycling against the traffic up Whitehall, crossing roads, making cars squeal to a halt and sneaking her way into the back of the National Gallery." Blunt ("Dan In Real Life") completed the hazardous sequence with aplomb, despite rain making the roadway slick and slippery, as the stunt cars braked hard to avoid her. Lynn found it a very different experience from his previous London location shoot, nearly twenty years earlier. "When we shot "Nuns On The Run", the only place we could shoot the chase sequence was Chiswick. And the reason for that was that 'Slipper of the Yard' (legendary policeman Jack Slipper) was our consultant. He had caught somebody who had killed a police officer in Chiswick and Chiswick owed him a favour. Whereas, this time, I was able to film in Trafalgar Square, so something has changed. It is much more film friendly. The City of London police couldn't have been more helpful: we did a car chase there and it was no problem. I had wanted to shoot "Nuns On The Run" in the City and wasn't allowed to." Pope is confident that the formula behind "Wild Target" will work. "I think audiences will have a good time: they're going to enjoy watching some of the great British performers doing something that they do best; which is making them laugh. We think that British comedy works anywhere and, if it's funny, it will travel."
What It's All About
 Victor is the most respected assassin in the country and also the most expensive. He is the doyen of killers, carrying on the family business established by his grandfather. The problem is that it's not a job where you tend to meet the right girl and so his domineering mother (who has recently gone to live in a Home) is increasingly worried that he's not going to get an heir to carry on the family business. She nags him about it; and has even taken up knitting, just in case. By contrast, Rose is a free spirit, a gleeful, joyous thief, who has come up with the ultimate con. She borrows a Rembrandt and gets a copy of it as well. She meets Ferguson, an art-loving gangster who is determined to buy the painting, and, after he's had it authenticated, she performs a switch; leaving him with the fake. By the time he realises, she's gone. Ferguson is left with only one course of action. He calls in Victor, who sets out to perform the hit on her. But instead of killing her he finds himself charmed to the point he's unable to end her life.
The Verdict
"There's nothing quite like a good British comedy, even when it is a remake of another film. In this case, the film is Pierre Salvadori's 1993 French comedy, "Cible émouvante". The Brit's have a real knack for comedy, no matter what the source, and "Wild Target" is another example to add to a long list of films which have tickled our funny bones. Crikey! This one's so good, even Rupert Grint (who I still think isn't at this stage destined for much beyond the fading when the Harry Potter franchise), gives a reasonable (read a tolerable) account of himself. In fact, it's hard to fault any of the cast members who populate their characters. Bill Nighy is, for many cinemagoers, always a 'good watch': no matter what role he may be playing. In "Wild Target" he is at his best, producing all the emotions needed to endear his character, top of the tree hit-man Victor Maynard, to us. Playing opposite him is Emily Blunt, one of the most talented young women in the industry today. Blunt's character Rose, is everything that Victor isn't. Where-as Victor is shackled by his upbringing and his emotional detachment from the world around him, Rose is the complete opposite: a freespirited, gregarious young woman, who never holds back. Gregor Fisher's character, the hapless henchman Mike, provides some good moments and will no doubt, garner plenty of sympathy from the audience. Eileen Atkins now has a 'hat-trick' playing a mother, after being cast as Maggie Walker in "Last Chance Harvey" and Eleanor of Aquitaine in "Robin Hood". A slightly older audience will really appreciate this one. Good cast and good fun! 4 STARS."
Who's Playing Who?
Bill Nighy
Emily Blunt
Rupert Grint
Rupert Everett
Eileen Atkins
Martin Freeman
Gregor Fisher
Graham Seed
Duncan Duff
Stephanie Lammond
Philip Battley
Geoff Bell
Sia Berkeley
Rory Kinnear
James O'Donnell
George Rainsford
Adrian Schiller
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Victor Maynard
Rose
Tony
Ferguson
Louisa Maynard
Hector Dixon
Mike
Appraiser
Jeweller
Hotel Receptionist
Barman
Fabian
Hotel Receptionist
Gerry Bailey
Barney
Waiter
Forger
The Crew
Director
Screenplay
Producers
Original Music
Cinematography
Film Editor
Casting
Production Design
Art Direction by
Set Decoration
Costume Design
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Jonathan Lynn
Lucinda Coxon
Martin Pope/Michael Rose
Michael Price
David Johnson
Michael Parker
Karen Lindsay-Stewart
Caroline Greville-Morris
Jim Glen
Geraint Powell
Sheena Napier
Run Time 104 minutes
Rated M [AUST]
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