The Matador (2006)

A Different Kind of Buddy Movie

Richard Shepard's The Matador presents a new take on the assassin film. No longer the stuff of the Steven Segal movie of the week, Shepard presents his gunman as a man on the verge of total collapse looking for a friend and loooking for a way out of his profession.

Pierce Brosnan gives a career defining performance as Julien Noble, a burned out hitman, on his way to collapse. After four James Bond films this is the ultimate anti-Bond film. The character is disheveled, unsure of himself and definately not the ladies man we are used to seeing Brosnan play. The other side of the pair is Greg Kinnear as Danny Wright a mid level businessman on the verge of losing his job and possibly his wife played by Hope Davis.

Far from the normal buddy film, Shepard allows his characters to develope slowly so that the audience truly understands their plight. This is a character driven film with intelligent dialogue and few thrills. Give time the audience begins to care about these people and the lives that they lead.

The are fine performances on both sides of the camera. David Tattersall, who shot the last Star Wars film does a great job making the film look like a much more expensive affair than it actually was. Robert Pearson's production design effectively doubles the Mexico City shooting location for many cities keeping things interesting.

The DVD comes packed with many extras including a making of featurette, two complete radio shows in which Shepard discusses the writing of the film and its reception at the Sundance Film Festival, two commentaries featuring Shepard and his stars and a trailer.

Check out this small gem of independant filmmaking. October 21, 2008

A facilitator of fatalities meets a nice guy in a fine, funny and potty-mouthed black comedy

Even assassins can have a crisis of conscience, and this smart black comedy of rifle shots and mercenary murder gives us the ten-step program. What makes The Matador interesting is that the movie isn't about rehabilitation, but friendship.

Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan) is an assassin, or as he prefers to put it, "I facilitate fatalities." Unfortunately for Noble, he's seen better days, physically and professionally. Anxiety attacks sometimes spoil his aim. Age and the appearance of being a ticking time bomb leave him with no friends, no home and only sex and booze as consolation. Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), on the other hand, even though he's lost his job, has a solid, mutually-loving relationship with his wife, the childhood sweetheart he calls Bean (Hope Davis). Danny is a decent, honorable good guy. The two are going to meet in Mexico City in a sleek hotel bar. Danny has just made a pitch for a desperately needed business contract. Julian, with a bullet from a high-powered rifle, has just splattered the head of a woman his handler, Mr. Randy (Philip Baker Hall), assigned him to take out. Noble is so inappropriately smart-mouth Danny nearly walks away, but he is so needy that he gets Danny to go with him to a bullfight. And there, Julian sort of surprises himself by telling Danny he's an assass...facilitator of fatalities. In a great and funny set piece, Julian shows him just how it can be done by picking someone at random who happens to have body guards. Then he asks Danny for help. Danny flees back home.

Months later, Danny and Bean in their Denver home hear a knock on their door late at night. It's Julian. He's screwed up once too often. The guys who hire him are after him. He confesses Danny is his only friend. Bean is fascinated. Danny is wary...but Danny is a good guy. After a night of getting-to-know-you-better, the next morning Danny and Julian are off to Phoenix for Julian's last assignment. Will they stay friends? Who knows? But as Julian tells Danny, "Just consider me the best cocktail party story you ever met."

The movie needs to be seen to appreciate the skillful, straight-faced approach to murder this comedy provides. There are no particular moral condemnations of Julian, just a kind of concerned response by Danny and Bean to his falling-apart neediness. The black comedy arises from the situation, but the fascination arises from the friendship that develops between these two men, the amoral Julian prone to anxiety attacks and the decent Danny. Pierce Brosnan gives one of the best performances of his career. If you weren't as decent as Danny, you'd never want Brosnan's Julian anywhere near you. He's no smooth James Bond here, just an inappropriately wisecracking assassin who appreciates sex in all its fine variety. Greg Kinnear has the tough job of balancing Danny's niceness with Brosnan's showy turn. He does it. It's Kinnear who makes The Matador such a weird and fine buddy movie.

Brosnan, for me, usually in his hero roles comes across as smug. As Julian Noble, Brosnan let's his usual veneer of charm and competence develop cracks. Brosnan knows what he's doing. I think he was just about as excellent in Evelyn and The Tailor of Panama. To see him in sympathetic lead hero mode before the heroic smugness set in, watch him in the TV movie Murder 101. Although Philip Baker Hall has a small role that could have been played by any competent actor, he makes a nice impression because we've liked him so much in other movies. To see just how extraordinary he was as an actor, check out his tour de force performance as Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's one-actor movie, Secret Honor - Criterion Collection. Hall looks nothing like Nixon, but there is absolutely no doubt who the character is, deep in the scotch and the self-pity, that we're watching. One word of warning for the family trade: The Matador has some of the funniest, most vivid and most obscene lines of dialogue I've heard in a long time. October 15, 2008

Brosnan Gives Bond the Finger

After MGM dumped him from the stagnant Bond franchise and implicitly questioned his abilities as an actor, Brosnan signed on to The Matador and turned in the performance of his career.

Brosnan plays Julian Noble, an unkempt, oft-inebriated, and decidedly unsuave world-class assassin who suffers from panic attacks. In other words - he's the anti-bond. Greg Kinnear and Hope Davis play the ordinary couple who are sucked into Julian's world in this odd mash-up of spy-thriller and buddy comedy, but Brosnan undoubtedly steals the show.

His Julian is a vulgar, shiftless villain with an appetite for orgies, underage girls, and conspicuously well-shaken vodka martinis. He is disgusting, pathetic and uninhibited by conscience, a combination that makes his nervous instability all the more unsettling. The fact that Brosnan still manages to make us root for Julian is quite a feat. Critics be silenced - this man can act.

The story itself is well executed, if somewhat predictable, but Brosnan easily carries it over the finish on Julian's shoulders. A better than average film featuring a must-see performance by Brosnan. DVD includes directors commentary and behind the scenes footage. October 15, 2008

Underappreciated actors show their range

This film can't be categorized and that's a good thing. The tone of the movie stands on the line between parady/satire and drama. Of course the subject of murder is serious and we shouldn't take it lightly. Brosnan plays a hit man who starts to feel remorse and longs for human connection. Kinnear plays a 'normal' businessman with real life worries and a life that Brosnan's character is drawn to. The question is, who will pulled into whose life. Much of the film covers both characters everday life events so we know a lot of who the are and what they do. In spite of the subject matter it isn't a flashy movie but much is done with subtlety. This movie deserved much more praise and exposure than what it got. Hopefully many have found it on dvd. July 22, 2008

Pierce Brosnan steals this show.

Brosnan plays a creepy yet wierdly amusing aging hitman. He runs into a struggling middle class businessman played by Greg Kinear in a Mexico City hotel bar and begins to wreak havoc in his life. All in all they make a pretty entertaining pairing and the film works as a light off-beat comedy.

Brosnan really is different from all the polished James Bondish characters he has portrayed. He comes across as slightly deranged, disheviled and just a bit sleazy,yet likeable.

Worth checking out. March 13, 2008

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