No.235 : Wild Target (2010)

Wild Target at the IMDb

Some people say British comedies are all the same predictable rubbish and feature the same old faces. Well if it’s ‘Wild Target’ they are commenting upon it’d be hard to argue with them!

Bill Nighy plays a hit man with mother and emotional issues. He’s had a long and successful career as an assassin, which he puts down to meticulous planning and not getting emotionally involved. We can see he’s hurting as he learns French from a tape and has dinner on his own, but surely nothing can break his granite like façade?

Meanwhile free spirited Emily Blunt is organising an art scam. She has hooked poor sucker Rory Kinnear to paint her an exact copy of an old master which she will then sell to Rupert Everett having shown him the original (Rory works at the National Gallery) before switching to the fake. The plan goes well and she makes £900k but the scheme falls apart when the paint is discovered to still be wet - art forgery mistake number one, you’d think!

Anyway Rupert hires Bill to kill Emily and after following her about town for a day Bill starts to take a shine to the thieving harlot. He is however about to shoot her when a rival hit man, Rab C Nesbitt, shows up and Bill has to decide to take the contract or the girl. Things are further complicated when Ron Weasley shows up and Bill, Ron and Emily have to escape together.

The remainder of the film is more or less padding as the three unlikely bedfellows get to know each other and themselves before evil hit man, Tim from the Office, tracks them down for a final showdown.

I don’t think I cracked a smile once during this alleged comedy. I normally quite like Bill Nighy but his character here was such a cliché it was hard to care. The meticulous hit man undone by a target plot is a lot older than Bill and frankly he is getting on a bit for his romance with Emily to be believable or even seemly. She is meant to come across as a free spirited rock chick but only manages ‘shallow thieving bint who gets lots of folk killed’.

Ron’s part is pretty superfluous and although he’s meant to be the son Bill never had he’s more like the guy who can’t act who’ll bring in the Harry Potter audience. Things should have been improved by adding Tim from ‘The Office’ to the mix but he lacked the menace his character was supposed to exclude and his comedy dentures were a mistake.

The climax, which has the most blatant foreshadowing I can remember (“be careful with that gun it explodes when fired”), was terrible but at least welcome as it signalled the film was nearly done.

I wasn’t bothered by the film’s shaky moral compass, only by it’s dearth of laughs and predictable plot.

Best Bit : Bill listens to his radio set
‘W’ Score : 9/23

No.178 : Wrath of the Titans (2012)

Wrath of the Titans at the IMDb

 Off to the olden days now as we take a look at this sequel to the remake of ‘Clash of the Titans’ - they don’t make them like that any more - oh wait they do. I haven’t seen the original remake probably due to it’s lack of Harry Hamelin or indeed a ‘W’ initial.

We don’t get much in the way of a recap, but it seems 10 years have passed since that film when Perseus slayed the Kraken and saved the day. He is now a widower and father to a young son. Despite being the son of Zeus he is living the simple life of a fisherman, so we are in for a dull film. But wait! Stuff is happening!

Zeus, played by a disinterested Liam Neeson, pops by to see the grandson and warn of bad omens. It seems that people have wised up and stopped praying to the Gods lessening their powers. The bad guys are taking advantage of this and plan to destroy the world. After getting the brush off from his idiot son, Zeus heads off to the underworld to have a chat with his brother Hades, played by an even more disinterested Ralph Fiennes. Bad mistake! Hades has his own plans and takes Zeus prisoner at the behest of their father Chronos - it’s like the Jeremy Kyle Show in that family.

The ominous portents prove truthful when, with their added Zeus powers, the bad guys unleash the titans - basically a pile of CGI monsters. These attack Perseus’ village and he soon has to don the leather chaps that signify he’s off to battle - or The Blue Oyster Club - it’s not made clear. The rest of the film is basically a quest as he gathers some support from the lovely Rosamund Pike, a poor man’s Russell Brand (if such a thing is possible) and Bill Nighy who hams it up horribly.

Soon our heroes are in the underworld and ready to free Zeus who has been connected to a Santa making machine that’s given him a long white beard. Can the siblings get together and gang up on Dad before no one believes in them anymore and condemns them to a dusty fate? Will Perseus remain at his nets with his son or will the passing of the thunderbolt tell him there is more to life than haddock?

This was a very much by the numbers swords and sandals epic and although it had a raft of stars and some decent action the whole thing was far less than the sum of its parts. Sam Worthington, late of ‘Avatar’, didn’t hack it as Perseus for me with his Aussie accent most jarring in the ancient world. He didn’t impress as the reluctant hero and his character’s arc where he went from fisherman to action hero to reluctant heir didn’t convince.

Liam and Ralph were obviously just in it for the pay cheques and you could sense their embarrassment as they apologetically delivered their laughable dialogue. Better was Rosamund, who although miscast as an Amazon warrior queen, did look most fetching in her leather mini skirt.

The bests bits were the action sequences with the opening and closing battles good fun. Both were totally pointless in the course of the film but you can’t see enough eight legged monsters getting a stick in the eye as far as I’m concerned. Despite a seemingly massive budget some bits were decidedly shoddy with a totally unconvincing flying horse only beaten in the crappy stakes by some fake looking Cyclops giants and some ropy wire work.

I’m not sure of the market this film was aimed at - there were long passages of dull chat with occasional CGI battles thrown in to keep the tempo up. The violence was cartoon at best and apart from Rosamund’s skirt there wasn’t any sexiness either.

Overall ‘Wrath of the Titans’ had a few watchable moments but ultimately it was a pointless exercise, unless you have ‘O’ level classics on Monday.

Best Bit : Oh me skirt keeps flapping up.
‘W’ Score 13/23