Not that the premise sounded original, I decided to give this film a shot one morning. A hit man falls for his target and in the process has a strange sort of awakening while forming the family he never had time for in his younger days. The actors all do a fine job but the script is so aimless and ill thought that this quickly becomes unwatchable. At first I was expecting a dark comedy with a modicum of violence but after the first act it's something else entirely, some sort of sickening love story with a message about family that no one can relate to.
There's about three things going on here besides the main story; Victor's crisis of self, his relationship with Rose, and his mentorship of Tony. This would be difficult for all but the most of astute of film makers to competently put together and outright fails in Wild Target, even if it is meant to be a comedy. From the get go there's so much focus placed on Victor's lack of a mate as well as his lack of a successor that once the three main characters show up on screen together it's painfully obvious where the story is headed. The issue is that the "how" involved in this process is dull and uninspired. The "why" is so thin that I'm left scratching my head over what exactly these three are doing in this strange configuration. To be brief, this arrangement is never developed. There's not a lick of characterization to suggest why the three of them have the need to form this familial unit so quickly. Sure, the circumstances give reason to the formation of the unit but there's never any believable or fleshed out reasoning for the persistence and continuation of this "family" and the roles that each adopt.
The relationship between Rose and Victor is perhaps one of the worst on screen couples I've ever seen. She goes from hate to love literally over a foot massage and the chemistry just isn't there. Again, there's so little character development beyond "Victor needs a wife" that the relationship isn't convincing. Not once did I root for them to get together nor did I feel any joy when they did. There was no heart or passion or any connection with the audience. Nonetheless, it was quite obvious the two would end up discussing his weight from the very first few minutes of the film.
Perhaps more outrageous than this mess of a love story is the forced inclusion of Tony, the homeless nobody who wants to find his place in the world and get a little bit of love. Where the necessity for this story element arose from is bewildering. He serves no place except for another good guy with a gun and his dynamic as an adopted apprentice is fuzzy at best. Moreover his extension into the familial unit as the child is stretching reality entirely too far. It is so difficult to understand his role in any realistic context that I'm left feeling disconnected and consequently see his position as confusing, bizarre, and trivial.
Wild Target is about as close to nonsense as any film I've seen. It gets a 2 only because the technical aspects of film making were tolerable. I'm not sure where all the positivity for this film is coming from; those describing it as "hilarious" must not have been as distracted as I was by the lack of cohesion and motivation.
There's about three things going on here besides the main story; Victor's crisis of self, his relationship with Rose, and his mentorship of Tony. This would be difficult for all but the most of astute of film makers to competently put together and outright fails in Wild Target, even if it is meant to be a comedy. From the get go there's so much focus placed on Victor's lack of a mate as well as his lack of a successor that once the three main characters show up on screen together it's painfully obvious where the story is headed. The issue is that the "how" involved in this process is dull and uninspired. The "why" is so thin that I'm left scratching my head over what exactly these three are doing in this strange configuration. To be brief, this arrangement is never developed. There's not a lick of characterization to suggest why the three of them have the need to form this familial unit so quickly. Sure, the circumstances give reason to the formation of the unit but there's never any believable or fleshed out reasoning for the persistence and continuation of this "family" and the roles that each adopt.
The relationship between Rose and Victor is perhaps one of the worst on screen couples I've ever seen. She goes from hate to love literally over a foot massage and the chemistry just isn't there. Again, there's so little character development beyond "Victor needs a wife" that the relationship isn't convincing. Not once did I root for them to get together nor did I feel any joy when they did. There was no heart or passion or any connection with the audience. Nonetheless, it was quite obvious the two would end up discussing his weight from the very first few minutes of the film.
Perhaps more outrageous than this mess of a love story is the forced inclusion of Tony, the homeless nobody who wants to find his place in the world and get a little bit of love. Where the necessity for this story element arose from is bewildering. He serves no place except for another good guy with a gun and his dynamic as an adopted apprentice is fuzzy at best. Moreover his extension into the familial unit as the child is stretching reality entirely too far. It is so difficult to understand his role in any realistic context that I'm left feeling disconnected and consequently see his position as confusing, bizarre, and trivial.
Wild Target is about as close to nonsense as any film I've seen. It gets a 2 only because the technical aspects of film making were tolerable. I'm not sure where all the positivity for this film is coming from; those describing it as "hilarious" must not have been as distracted as I was by the lack of cohesion and motivation.