Review of The Matador on Filmviews.net
Year2005 ReviewerChris Docker
A Matador, we are told, has a strict code of honour. To kill the bull with a swift, lethal stroke is best, rather than progressively wounding it with many sword strokes. A top matador slides his sword into the bull at a lethal spot, minimizing pain (and the crowd's moral discomfort).
The opening scene of our film sets the tone as light comedy when a tree, struck in a thunder storm, falls into a house - interrupting a young couple as they have sex in the kitchen. Dusting themselves off, he turns to her with, "Are you still horny?" Pierce Brosnan, on the other hand, is the hard working private assassin, Julian Noble. "Now this smells like a parody", a TV presenter overvoices. We catch up with Julian on his birthday - which he has no-one to celebrate with. His is a hectic and demanding schedule, and it is starting to take a toll. His life is a solitary one - wherever he is working is his home. He has no colleagues, only a contact who reaches him through regular newspaper advertisements to pass on details of the next job (usually corporate 'facilitating'). Noble is a facilitator. He facilitates death, and the only other people in his life, outside of his targets, are strings of whores in various exotic locations.
Almost at the point of exhaustion and winding down over several margaritas, he manages to make a friendship of sorts with Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), a businessman down on his luck who somehow tolerates Noble's haltingly inadequate people skills. Greg Kinnear provides the clown against which straight man Bosnan can play. Some time later, when Noble himself is being hunted, he turns to Danny for solace.
The Matador veers uneasily between comedy and psychological drama, with a few lightweight thrills thrown in. At a bullfight match, Danny challenges Julian to 'show' him what he means when he says he is a 'hitman', and we are on the edge of our seats while we wait to see if he is going to go through with a killing. At other times, Brosnan just about manages to play down his calling as 'one hell of a tall story' to his newly found, ingenuous (and unlikely) pal-in-times-of-need. There are some great visual scenes - Brosnan striding confidently through the hotel lobby in his swimming trunks, or the colourful bullfighting footage - and the script just about manages to pull off what is an unlikely story. But when Brosnan's character starts to break down and lose his cool, we realise that although this actor has come along way since his pre- James Bond days, the water is almost over his head if he should try any deep psychological character portrayal. There are a few interesting twists - we are kept in suspense about Noble's true sexuality and some of the targets; but when the film reaches its more introspective moments, with Noble suffering blackouts, we have to adjust to a change of pace. Brosnan describes himself as looking "like a Bangkok hooker on a Sunday morning the night after the navy left town" but the gags here are aimed at pathos more than laughs. We wonder if there is a dark secret between him and Greg Kinnear's character and we are not disappointed. As hit men go, this one is quite a nice guy. Released around the same time as Spielberg's Munich, one might wonder if a whole new genre of humanised hit men will target our screens.
The Matador is entertaining if superficial. As an actor, Brosnan is showing promise without quite reaching the heights to which a professional of his experience might aspire. While offering little more than light consumer fare, you will at least not feel the pain as your hand slides into your wallet for the price of admission, or discomfort as you give up an hour and a half of your precious time.
Rating: 7/10;