No laughs in hitman comedies

Killers
DIRECTED BY: Robert Luketic
STARRING: Ashton Kutcher, Katherine Heigl, Tom Selleck, Catherine O’Hara
CERT: 12

DO you remember when Ashton Kutcher was likeable and funny? No? Alright, that’s OK. It was a long time ago. He was in That 70s Show and went on to star in the excellently ridiculous Dude, Where’s My Car. Well, then he became a star, married Demi Moore and topped it all off with the godawful Punk’d, at which point he vanished without trace where the sun don’t shine.
This latest product of the Kutcher ego is a romantic comedy with lots of guns and bad stunts tagged on, in a clear but terribly misguided attempt to establish its leading man (and producer) as a Hollywood action star.
Who knows what the man was thinking. Maybe he felt he had to prove to his wife that he could mix intense action and funny one-liners just as well as Bruce. Or maybe she put him up to it. I don’t know. It’s kind of sad.
In any case, the film fails on all counts. The action is bland, there are no laughs and the romance is about as hot as a JR ice pop. (If you don’t remember those, that’s OK too.) If it’s any consolation to Kutcher, Mr Willis hasn’t been convincing as a romantic lead since Moonlighting. Though he still leads 2-0.
The leading lady here is the lovely Katherine Heigl, a fine comic actress, who has been lending her talents to some awful rubbish since making an excellent big screen impression in Knocked Up.
In Killers she plays Jen, recently dumped and so miserable that she agrees to go on holiday to France with her parents (Catherine O’Hara and, um, Tom Selleck). She’s not long in Nice before she runs into a handsome lad called Spencer (Kutcher), who apparently has a severe allergy to shirts because he hardly ever wears one. Either that or it’s another macho Bruce thing.
Anyway, besides having a bad skin condition, Spencer is also a professional hitman. He’s in France on a job but he’s not going to go telling that to this hot new woman. So they hit it off and have a fine old time.
Three years later, they’re married and settled down, Spencer seems to have gotten his wish to leave the dirty job behind and Jen has never been any the wiser.
Until Spencer’s 30th birthday rolls around and some of the couple’s friends and neighbours turn out to be a tad less pleasant than they seemed.
It’s hard to find words to describe how crap this is and equally hard to bring myself to recommend that you go and see it for yourself. I fear I might be doing you great moral harm.
There are a few graces but so much else is bad that they simply couldn’t be the saving kind. The scenery is lovely, Katherine Heigl still sparkles occasionally and Mr Selleck somehow manages to come out of it without disgracing himself.
The same can’t be said for the usually excellent Catherine O’Hara, who is landed with the permanently drunk mother role.
And when you’re reaching deep into the barrel for that gag, you know you’re in trouble.

Wild Target
DIRECTED BY: Jonathan Lynn
STARRING: Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt, Rupert Grint, Rupert Everett
CERT: 12A

If you didn’t already know that the World Cup is now in full swing, you could ­ by some plain old deduction ­ arrive at the conclusion that there is some class of big event distracting a sizeable chunk of the population, simply by looking at the current cinema listings.
You might find yourself saying to yourself, “Hmm. Two hitman comedies in the one week, both of them missing certain crucial elements, but mostly the comedy.” Something is amiss. Indeed, methinks some industry heads might have been trying to offload some garbage while no-one was looking.
Wild Target is not as hideous as Killers, but it is still a deeply bad thing – one that leaves you wondering what attracted such fine comic actors as Bill Nighy and Rupert Everett and what a quality actress like Emily Blunt was thinking at all.
Nighy is a hitman called Victor, who’s contracted to bump off a con artist called Rose (Blunt), who had the cheek to do a Mr Ferguson (Everett) out of a million quid by way of a fake Rembrandt.
But instead of killing her, Victor falls for the bold young thief and saves her life when another assassin turns up to fill her with lead. A young lad called Tony happens to be on the scene and ends up tagging along with the hitman and his girl, who find themselves on the run from some very angry fellows.
Sounds like it should be a lot of fun but hardly anything about it works. All concerned will cash the cheque, chalk it up to bad judgement, and move on, while the rest of us eejits will be left to contemplate the many other things we could have done with a tenner.