Wild Target

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Emily Blunt, Rupert Grint, and Bill Nighy unite for a strange and very funny movie about assassination, life, and love.


Tropes used in Wild Target include:
  • Accidental Aiming Skills: Tony shoots someone accurately the first time he picks up a gun, and doesn't know how. The second time, he shoots someone's ear off. He also grabs a thrown knife out of the air, but no one else sees it.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: Between Victor and Rose.
  • Black Comedy: It's basically about an assassin falling in love and ensuring that he leaves a legacy.
  • Career Killer: Victor, much to the point where he doesn't really seem to have a life outside of killing people.
  • Chekhov's Gun: One of the literal examples.
  • Deus Ex Machina: Maynard's mother showing up in the end is arguably an example.
  • Family Business: Victor's father was an assassin, as was his father's father, etc.
  • Funny Bruce Lee Noises: Done by Tony while practicing with a katana in one scene.
  • Gun Stripping: Victor Maynard is trying to teach Tony the tricks of the trade. Surprisingly Tony manages to put the gun together... but only to have it fly apart when he picks it up.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Ron Weasley! And Phil! And BILL NIGHY!
  • Ho Yay: The scene with Victor and Tony in the bathroom is the best example.
  • In Love with the Mark: Victor is initially unable to kill Rose due to chance, but he grows interested in her and agrees to protect her. They end up falling in love.
  • In Training: Tony, under Victor's tutelage.
  • Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Rose
  • May-December Romance: Victor and Rose.
  • Mistaken for Gay: Victor, by his mother, Rose, among other people. While he's not really a Camp Straight, his personality fits the stereotype of an uptight, closeted/repressed gay man.
  • That Poor Cat: When Rose is trying to quietly escape Maynard's home out a window, she throws her heavy luggage out the window, prompting this. Earlier, we'd seen the same cat painted neon pink after Victor cuts loose for his birthday.
  • Toyota Tripwire: Tony gets this in the face.
  • Uptight Loves Wild: Victor and Rose's relationship to a t, although in a sense, Victor's long experience with contract killing makes me considerably more "wild" than Rose, who is just a kleptomaniac.