| The Matador | Certificate: 15 Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear Directed by: Samm Dunn, Scott McFayden Canada, 2005 |
One night in Mexico City "Facilitator of fatalities" Julien Noble (Brosnan) finds himself friendless and drunk in a hotel bar trying to strike up a conversation with strait-laced travelling businessman Danny Wright (Kinnear) and thus a peculiar and strained "friendship" begins. Julien is everything that Danny is not. Sleazy, amoral, sexually uninhibited, alcoholic and foul-mouthed… oh yes, and he kills people. In a neat distortion of his Bond image Brosnan clearly relishes the chance to trash the image of the super suave British assassin he has played with such skill over the past decade. In fact, all the elements of Bond are here - Julien also travels the globe, sleeps with gorgeous women, drinks glamorous cocktails, kills without mercy and quips his way through life. ÌýHowever, he's jet-lagged, pays for seedy sex with boys AND girls, drinks four margaritas at a time, is prone to panic attacks and his jokes are crude, inappropriate and offensive. All he wants to do is "retire to a lovely little Greek island full of lovely little Greeks.." but this seems unlikely as killers never get much time off between jobs - unless they want to be permanently 'rested'. The uneasy friendship of Danny and Julien is cemented at a bullfight when the easy-going Danny is unexpectedly asked by his company to stay on and continue his business negotiations. With time on his hands and constant badgering from his new-found best-friend, Danny accepts a ticket to see a bullfight, despite his reservations at attending such a cruel spectacle. It's here that Danny finds out that what he considers to be a macabre spectacle is something that gives Julien pause for thought, meditation and a sense of purpose. The comedy here is at times broad yet handled so skillfully by the two leads that this odd-couple scenario becomes very believable. Greg Kinnear is fabulous as the Denver businessman believing he his cursed with a never-ending run of bad luck following a personal tragedy some years ago. He brings a poignancy and seriousness that cleverly sets up some of the more outlandish scenarios and makes them seem quite plausible. Yet this movie belongs to Pierce Brosnan and his whiskey-soaked David Bowie-esque delivery. Like George Clooney and, dare I say it, Cary Grant, Brosnan has a suave, easy-charm coupled with a deft comic touch that not only has the audience wanting to emulate him at his most sophisticated but creates real belly laughs when he performs perfectly-timed slapstick comedy. The sight of Brosnan wasted in a hotel room in an sombrero on his birthday, realising that due to the nature of his profession he really has no friends to call his own, completely sombrely undermines the notion of the ice-cold hired killer and yet is cruelly and sublimely funny. There are over pot-shots at his celluloid personality such as a knowing parody of Bond walking through a hotel lobby from Die Another Day has Brosnan stumbling through a hotel lobby in his Y-fronts and a pair of cowboy boots swigging a tin of cheap beer! And how many other cinema heart-throbs would steal a hooker's purple nail varnish and then do his toenails just to add some sparkle to his day? The Matador is a fabulous odd-couple comedy with some great lines, terrific interplay between the leads, a magnificent soundtrack featuring The Jam and The Killers alongside Trini Lopez and plenty more surprises along the way. Highly recommended. The Matador was shown as part of the Official Selection strand at the Leeds International Film Festival 2005. The film comes to Leeds on general release on Friday 3 March 2006. | 
