In which Brosnan plays the anti-Bond.
Since Pierce Brosnan garnered a Golden Globe nomination a few weeks ago for his work in The Matador, comment about the film hasn't focused on much else. Without a doubt, the Irish actor's earned every word of the encomia-and not just for pulling off the feat of being So Not James Bond, but ***image2***for comfortably inhabiting an utterly endearing sleazebag (the only other actor who could pull this off has got to be Christopher Walken). But it'd be a shame to let Brosnan's bravura performance distract us from the rest of what
The Matador
has to offer.
Brosnan portrays über-unsavory alcoholic hitman Julian Noble, who's in Mexico City on assignment; late one night, he runs into Danny (Greg Kinnear), a down-on-his-luck salesman from Denver. In an awkward, tender moment of abrupt hotel-bar confidences, Julian admits that it's his birthday and he has no friends with whom to spend it, while Danny shares that he and his wife lost their son a few years previously in a school bus accident. Unable to express the appropriate condolences, Julian responds with a joke about a dwarf with a 15-inch…yes indeedy, whereupon Danny leaves in a flurry of hurt feelings, understandably offended.
For most of us, as the Sundays sang, here's where the story ends; but Julian pursues Danny with apologies and continued overtures of friendship; and there's an oddly persistent quality to writer-director Richard Shepard's script as well. During further male bonding at a bullfight, Danny asks Julian what he does for a living, and on a whim Julian decides to tell him: "I facilitate things…like fatalities." Danny's incredulous, to say nothing of horrified, and eventually the two men part ways for good. Sure, they do. Flash-forward six ***image1***months: Julian's having the assassin's equivalent of panic attacks, has flubbed a couple of jobs and now the hit's out on him. So where does he go for refuge and assistance? Would you be surprised if I said Denver?
Shepard works with a deft touch, which is vital for story that teeters so eloquently on the edge of contrast between Julian's seedy quotidian existence of prostitutes and murder-for-hire and the sentimental sweetness of Danny's homelife with high-school sweetheart Bean (Hope Davis, bringing a peppery fervency to her brief but crucial role). In
The Matador
, Shepard's found a pair of actors with the chops and the chemistry to help him examine the vulnerable underbelly of male friendship in a way few films, quite frankly, ever have. That alone would be something-but throw in Brosnan striding through a hotel lobby wearing nothing but black cowboy boots, sunglasses and a black bikini bottom, and you've got a movie well worth the price of admission.
