WILD TARGET 2 1/2 stars
Freestyle Releasing, Rated PG-13

Homicide for hire as a weapon of laughter may be an even more daunting challenge than the assassination profession itself. But British director Jonathan Lynn (Nuns on the Run, My Cousin Vinny), who’s displayed his expertise at mixing murder and silly mayhem on both continents, continues to exhibit his flair for pathological lunacy with Wild Target, even as the story occasionally feels overwrought and recycled.

Wild Target pictures

Emily Blunt is Rose, a daffy, alluring kleptomaniac who whimsically advances in her illicit career from petty shoplifting to high-end counterfeit art, specifically a Rembrandt housed in a museum. But Rose makes the grave error of pawning off the fake on ferocious London crimelord Ferguson (Rupert Everett), who’s not in the least amused.

Enter Victor Maynard (Bill Nighy), an efficient, gentlemanly killer for hire assigned by Ferguson to terminate Rose. Victor is also the henpecked descendant of an infamously esteemed dysfunctional crime family presided over by austere, nagging widowed mom Louisa (Eileen Atkins). Louisa too excels at the art of premeditated gunplay, even though confined to a wheelchair at a nursing home, as well as expertly impaling annoying parrots with knitting needles.

A lonely aging professional gunman who’s about to take a hit of his own from a midlife crisis, Victor is increasingly infatuated with overly confident artful dodger Rose and recklessly abandons his assignment of dispatching her to rescue her instead, though that deal includes harboring flaky fugitive Tony (Rupert Grint). None of this sits well with a furious Ferguson or Victor’s disapproving malevolent mum.

(From L.) Emily Blunt, Bill Nighy and Rupert Grint star in Wild Target

By no means everyone’s cup of tea (with crumpets), Wild Target necessitates an acquired taste for British comedy, meaning a highly stylized and inhibited snobbish irreverence, served up with a slice of outlandish sinister menace on the elegant side.