The Matador (2005)

Married couple Bean (Hope Davis) and Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear) are still recovering from their son's death three years earlier. Danny on a Mexico City business trip encounters Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan). He is surprised that Julian is actually a hired killer and refuses to help Julian on a job. Julian continues his jobs but his lonely womanizing killing lifestyle starts to take a toll. His failures force his handler Mr. Randy (Philip Baker Hall) to consider terminating him. It's Christmas in Denver when Julian shows up at the Wright home.Pierce Brosnan delivers a fun assassin. Julian and Danny in Mexico City is loads of fun. The problem is that it never gets any better than that. It would be much better to have the guys join up from Mexico and continue a wacky killing road adventure all the way to the end. This has the parts to make for a fun killer duo but it doesn't completely deliver.

The Matador is a low budget film but makes good use of location filming to give the impression that its punching above its weight.It also has a cult following and a good soundtrack with a killer end track.Pierce Brosnan continues his anti-Bond roles with a slimy, smarmy, sleazy hit-man having a crisis. When the time for a hit comes he gets the yips and unable to pull a trigger, causing his handlers consternation..Brosnan meets in a hotel bar in Mexico, Greg Kinnear an out of sorts businessman still grieving the loss of his son and feeling the pinch that he is not landing the big clients and his business may go down the tubes.Out in a bull fight arena Brosnan reveals his true vocation and the art of the Matador mirrors that to the art of the Hit-man. However with Brosnan's continuing lack of hits means that he needs Kinnear's help, the two people are unlikely allies but they both kind of need each to get over some obstacles that life has thrown at them.This is an enjoyable film, maybe it takes time to get going but it has dark edgy comedy mixed with bittersweet drama.

Should I feel a little bit guilty for having enjoyed this film? It's not the greatest action movie around, it lacks special effects and car chases. Credibility is not really the strong argument of the story. We are asked and we end by sympathizing with a couple of guys who do very bad things. And yet The Matador produced and acted by Pierce Brosnan worked for me better than I expected. Now I need to find why.Julian Noble is a hit-man and the most irregular guy on Earth. He kills people for money, has no home or even a fixed address, getting drunk and buying sex seem to be his only pass-times. Danny Wright is the most regular guy on Earth, a businessman from Denver, he does have a house and a beautiful and loving wife, but his professional and personal life seems to have entered in an unavoidable dead-end. Their getting together is an improbable event, the only less probable one being them becoming friends. Yet, this is exactly what happens in The Matador and their friendship takes a path that is unpredictable and hidden from the viewer or the viewer is sent to wrong tracks for much of the time.So why does the story written and directed by Richard Shepard work? One of the reasons is that each of the three characters has a lot to identify with. Of course, hard to resonate with the professional killer day job, but certainly easy to feel compassion for working permanently under pressure, getting tired of the accelerated (corporate!) rhythm, not getting a listening ear from your boss. With the other two characters (Danny and his wife) it's much easier, they are us, but here comes the second principal reason of my liking this film - acting. Both Greg Kinnear and Hope Davis not only give fine performances, but they are sincere and feel the roles. They are us, and make us understand that. Pierce Brosnan is nothing but perfect, this is the best role I saw him in, his switching acts from the cool killer to the lost kid in town, from cynicism to vulnerability are masterful and the comical register fits him as well as the James Bond jacket. Last reason, the film carries some problematic or bad ideas (friendship as a good excuse for killing for example) but also a great one - beware of what regular people can do when you push them with the back to the wall! Eventually the combination of these three arguments wins.

Everybody needs friends or some sort of friendship to go through things in this life. As said in "It's a Wonderful Life" one can't be considered a failure if he or she has a friend. With this philosophy in mind what would think of a hit-man who has difficulties in making friends and needs to find one? What kind of trouble he would have? This is the dilemma of Julian (Pierce Brosnan) while visiting Mexico where he has a target to kill but instead he meets Danny (Greg Kinnear), an troubled salesman who's there for a business that can change his life after lots of failed business.This unlikely friendship is the basis of "The Matador", a film that discuss the importance of having friends even if people and their jobs have nothing in common. Somehow, the story will prove that these guys need each other to share values and experiences, and that everything might work out for them even that we could probably think that these guys are completely different from each other.Almost like "Analyze This", this comedy takes the cliché of an dangerous man who has a nervous breakdown that ruins his life and work, can't function at all and realizes that his life is a mess, he's not married, don't have friends and no place to stay, always traveling around the world to kill people. But he's an unpleasant man, very inconvenient, joking at the wrong time and always tries to involve Danny into his life of work. Confusion and trouble ahead!Treated as a comedy with a few action sequences, this is a good film but never hilariously funny. Has some good jokes (Brosnan dreaming of being a cheerleader) but that's it. If the writer was more clever he could have made of this an efficient thriller.The few thrilling sequences present here are shallow and inexcusable if we have to believe that Julian, a pro, really needs Danny to perform his last job, quoting that the other guy needs to distract the bodyguard of his target since the angle he has to execute his shooting doesn't allow him to do much. This moment is quite dumb,; a professional hit-man would find a way to do the job, even with a breakdown over his shoulders (and specially if knowing beforehand who is the target). The movie survives to this and some other flaws (it takes a lot of time to put these opposite forces together), delivers a good message, greatly presented and without being corny; the cast is really good, Brosnan is quite surprising and has some of the best lines of the movie along with Hope Davis (playing Kinnear's wife); and the soundtrack is brilliant with hits from The Jam, The Killers, Tom Jones and Asia.Helping or not, making us smile or not, that's what friends are for...even if the only one you have is a matador. 7/10