It's hard to reconcile the feeling you get when you find out a film you've seen is a remake of a foreign (typically French) piece of comedic cinema. The Dinner Game recently got this treatment, being stripped down and reconstituted as Dinner For Schmucks. The French Un Indien dans la Ville was remade as the criminally underrated Jungle 2 Jungle, a comedy boasting not only a totally hip street name, but also Tim Allen using a blowgun to impale a fly whilst surrounded by stockbrokers. Brilliant. It's like every critique about the economy summed up in one swift visual metaphor.
Now, we have Wild Target, a remake of the 1993 French comedy Cible Emouvante. There's a dangerous avenue many critics and audiences stroll down; the avenue of 'the original was better'. This isn't always the case, and it's vital to remember that a fresh approach to source material can yield blazingly pleasant results, such as the American remake of The Office.
Wild Target, however, doesn't reach quite such dizzying heights as a reinterpretation.
The film charts the banal minutia which constitutes the life of Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy), a stunningly uptight hitman who appears to have made a kind of Faustian bargain with his family legacy; not only is he lethally efficient, he's also had to shed even the slightest notion of joy from his life. He's almost 55 years old, is largely tethered to an oppressive but well-meaning mother (Eileen Atkins), and talks to himself at dinner in his house full of shrink-wrapped furniture.
Eventually, we stray into the life of a young, gorgeous and evidently morally vacuous free-spirit, Rose (Emily Blunt), who saunters into the company of several gangsters and their charming boss, Tony (Rupert Everett), whereupon she sells them a counterfeit Rembrandt for an exorbitant sum. When they find out, they hire the best assassin in the business - Maynard - to carry out a judicious hit.
Rose, however, has an effect on the fascinatingly insular Maynard, and eventually he accidentally saves her life and she employs him to protect her. It's around about this time that a young stoner cleaning cars, Tony (Rupert Grint) stumbles upon a Mexican standoff and manages to dispatch a foe with lethal accuracy, which leads Maynard to patently hit upon taking Tony on as an apprentice. The three are then pursued mercilessly, and to coin a tired phrase, mayhem ensues.
The cast, it must be pointed out, are superb in Wild Target. Bill Nighy is wound as tight as a drum, lips constantly pursed below a fastidiously maintained circa 1960 mustache. You can practically smell the harsh yet vague sting of antiseptic on the guy. He carries out each hit with the exactness one typically associates with reclusive cat lovers and he does, it is later revealed, have a cat. His mannerisms are precise yet totally endearing, and watching him thaw out is due entirely to the substantial skills Nighy possesses.
Rupert Grint is, equally, fantastic. He's been given a similarly bumbling skin to step into as he's been filling as Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter series, but it's obvious he has plenty more scope up his sleeve. He's a loping, vague slacker whose bright-eyed optimism makes him very hard not to like.
Emily Blunt as Rose has the hardest job. The entire film hinges on Victor falling in love with her free-spiritedness and her actions; the script, however, does a terrible job of making this transition anything other than jarring. Considering what she's working with, though, Blunt does manage to fill Rose with so many charming (and infuriating) quirks it's almost impossible to process them all. Also worth mentioning is the casting of Martin Freeman as Dixon, the hitman hired to pick up the job Maynard failed at. Keep an eye out for his dentures and his facial tics; Freeman has such acute control over his face one could spend hours watching it.
Wild Target begins with the promise of becoming another Saving Grace or Waking Ned Devine; in short, a piece of UK comedic cinema which manages to juggle sentiment and slapstick and still look graceful in the process. Both of those films, though, had superb scripts. Wild Target falters after the first half hour due to the complete lack of evolution given to Rose's character; Victor and Tony grow to adore her, but it's almost as though they're watching a totally different character, one whose subtle growth we're not privileged enough to bear witness to.
By the end of the film, you're left with a uniformly excellent cast making the best with what they have. It's cute as hell and it's being helmed by experts, but it also bears the unmistakable marks of wasted potential.
Wild Target opens in cinemas on Thursday, November 11.