The dark and cheeky comedy puts a new spin on the story of an assassin. Pierce Brosnan sheds his James Bond persona completely as a foul mouthed, boozin' hitman. The other unique twist is how the average Joe reacts to meeting a paid killer in real life. Would you freak and lock yourself away, or would you be curious and ask what his gun looks like?
Julian Noble (Brosnan) is a flashy dresser for a man who doesn't want to be seen killing people. He travels the globe doing hits for his bosses, because he's one of the best. But recently he's gotten sloppy and his drinking and whoring is becoming habitual. At the hotel bar in Mexico City, he meets struggling business man Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear, AS GOOD AS IT GETS), who is banking on a big deal. During their conversation, Noble says everything wrong offending Danny up and down, so the next day he invites Wright to the bull fights, where Danny asks that seemingly innocent question — so what do you do for a living, Julian?
That simple question springboards an interesting character study of the two characters, as well as a morality play. So when you meet an international assassin, do you tell your wife Bean (Hope Davis, AMERICAN SPLENDOR) about him? What does she think when he shows up at your door in Denver in the middle of the night six months later? What do you do when a hitman asks you for a favor, because, even though you barely know him, he claims you're his best friend? These are the questions that director/writer Richard Shepard plays with. He takes the conventional conflicted killer tale and twists it into something fresh.
Brosnan is magnificent as Noble. He's paranoid and loud, and very un-Bond-like walking across the hotel lobby disheveled wearing only a bikini swimsuit and boots. Despite all the bawdiness, Brosnan makes the man charming in a haggard pitbull puppy sort of way. Countering him perfectly, Kinnear plays his straight man of sorts. The former TALK SOUP host has made a solid acting career of playing everyman types, and here he gets to play one who has a chance to peek at his darker side. Davis, in a small, but important role, makes Bean far more interesting than what would be expected of the wife of the nice guy who has an assassin as a friend.
Because it's mainly interested in its characters, Shepard does build some nice tension based around character choices. Will they do the right thing? What did they do that we don't know about? Often laugh-out-loud funny, THE MATADOR also has a real story about friendship. The one line description of this film — a businessman and a hitman walk into a bar — could have unraveled into a bad, bad comedy, but Shepard makes these characters real, not caricatures of the same characters we've seen endlessly before. He also has a great deal of help from Brosnan who gives a career highlight performance.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
