The wonderfully smooth actor Bill Nighy plays Victor Maynard, a hit man in Britain who is trying to uphold the family tradition. His grandfather was a hit man, his father was a hit man and he has become professionally meticulous about doing his job. His mother (Eileen Atkins in a droll character portrayal) wants to be sure he doesn’t let the family tradition down. She is also worried about his not having a woman in his life and thinks there may be a reason. “Do you have tendencies?” she asks.

Meanwhile, we meet the delightful Emily Blunt as the free-spirited, devious Rose, who loves to steal and pulls off an art fraud by substituting a fake Rembrandt for a real one. The man she fleeced hires Maynard to kill her. It turns out that she is not so easy to dispatch. The screenplay, written by Lucinda Coxon, does what you might expect. In the process of hunting her, Maynard falls for Rose. Soon they are both being hunted and marked for elimination.

Along the way they get an accomplice, Tony, played by Rupert Grint, who, now older, is able to move on from the “Harry Potter” films. He adds to the amusement, as the film kicks into faster gear under the snappy direction of Jonathan Lynn. There is comic violence—how could there not be in a film about a hit man?—and there are chases, but all is satirical fun, not with any effort to get off on killing.

Primarily, it is the acting that carries the day. Nighy is wonderfully calm and collected. He is a superb actor in whatever he plays and it shows here. Blunt is a knockout and infuses the film with sexual energy as well as comic verve. An assortment of character types (played by Rupert Eeverett, Martin Freeman, Gregor Fisher, Geoff Bell and Roy Kinnear) populate the action, and the settings are appealing too, whether Trafalgar Square in London or a big country house on the Isle of Man.