“The Matador”The Weinstein CompanyDirected and written by Richard ShepardStarring: Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Philip Baker Hall, Adam Scott and Dylan BakerRated R/96 minutesOpens Jan. 27, 2006Three-and-a-half out of four stars
Julian Noble is a lonely man: outwardly mellow but silently desperate, his pervasive insecurity masked by a fine, manly mustache.
In short, Julian (Pierce Brosnan) needs a friend.
He finds such a friend in Mexico City, where he meets the mild-mannered salesman Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear-is anybody better at being mild-mannered?), who is equally desperate but for much different reasons. A few years back, he lost his job and his young son. He’s just now starting to get his career back on track, and he suspects that if he doesn’t, his wife will lose faith in him.
Danny and his business partner, Phil (Adam Scott), are on the verge of closing a major, career-saving deal in Mexico City, on which all of Danny’s hopes and dreams seem to rest. He meets Julian in a hotel bar, and they hit it off?sort of.
After a few minutes and a couple of drinks, Danny heartbreakingly recounts the story of his young son’s death?and Julian immediately counters with a filthy joke. Their half-drunk, introductory conversation has a kind of awkward brilliance to it, as neither man knows quite what to make of the other.
Oh yeah, and one more thing: Julian kills people for a living.
As both men get stuck in Mexico City for longer than they expected, Julian invites Danny out for a day at his favorite pastime, a bullfight, during which he tells his new friend of his, shall we say, dubious profession. Of course, the film being set in the real world, Danny doesn’t believe him at first. A contract killer? Please, those kinds of people only exist in the movies.
He doesn’t believe him until, that is, Julian shows him exactly, and I mean exactly, how he does his job, setting up an absolutely incredible sequence in which Julian, with Danny at his side, finds a target, scopes out the surroundings, formulates a method and an exit strategy and then?oh, but you’ll have to see for yourself. It’s a scene of absolute genius.
Julian is also suffering from a bout of performance anxiety-he’s screwed up two jobs in a row and knows his life may be in danger from the wealthy, anonymous businessmen who sign his checks. Months pass after Julian and Danny’s brief friendship in Mexico City, but it springs up once again when Julian arrives at the door of Danny and his wife, Bean (Hope Davis), looking for a place to stay.
There are, of course, more details to Julian’s plight, and plenty of other surprises along the way. But what writer/director Richard Shepard is more concerned with are the characters themselves. “The Matador” seems like just another odd-couple movie in which the hit man meeting the everyman. But what we get is unexpected depth and moral complexity.
And Brosnan-what can I say about Brosnan? He’s never been better than he is here. He goes so far against type and shows us a character we would never expect. Like Robert Downey Jr. earlier this year in “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” Brosnan gives a priceless comic performance layered with humanity. “Matador” may re-invigorate not only a shopworn genre but perhaps Brosnan’s acting career as well.
