Awesome Movie

A Masterpiece!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

"The Matador" is an entry from Leonard Maltin's book "151 Best Movies You've Never Seen" and after running out of suggestions for what to watch on Netflix, I've used the book to find some excellent lesser-known pictures. However, "The Matador" is one suggestion I could have done without. Now I am not saying it's a bad film....but it really didn't do enough to make me glad I saw it. The movie involves an odd relationship between a screwball assassin (Pierce Brosnan) and ordinary businessman (Greg Kinnear). They have absolutely no reason to like each other nor spend time together...yet, inexplicably, you are expected to believe that they somehow become friends. And, when the hitman loses his mojo and find he can no longer kill, his new odd best friend helps him relearn the love of killing in order to keep himself employed and alive.So much of the film makes little sense. Sure, the story is original. but if you cannot believe anything you see, it makes a very tough sell...and it just didn't work for me. In addition, I often found the film unnecessarily crude and nasty...and I just had trouble connecting to it.

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.

For all the hubbub about pretty sparkling vampires, superheroes, serial killers and zombie hordes, there just might be more films made about the humble hit-man than you would ever think.The Matador is another, and a good one.The hit-man in question is Julian (Pierce Brosnan), a smooth operator who works on contract and never misses a target, leading to his feelings of invincibility and an attitude that is pure bravado. Julian thinks not of what he can do for others, but what others can do for – and to – him. He is a user unafraid of offending anyone, and largely unconcerned of what others think of him. After all he can kill them if he wants! But after a lifetime of continuing the same cycle: prep, kill, celebrate, fornicate, repeat without any real human contact or a place to call home Julian has begun to feel that his own lacks meaning. He wants human contact that doesn't end with a stain of some kind (Sorry!).Julian feels that he has found that when he meets Danny (Greg Kinnear). Danny is a hard working salesman of some kind in Mexico for a pitch meeting that he desperately needs to close with a big account. While the meeting went well he remains in Mexico until he is given a yea or nay in case he needs to wrap up some loose ends. Danny meets Julian after the initial warmth of a job well done has tempered somewhat, and they share a spirited but awkward and ultimately failed conversation at the bar when the talk turns to Danny's dead little boy and Julian simply has no way of empathising.A rocky start.Julian bumps into Danny the next day, apologising profusely and pleading with him to hang out and let Julian make up for it. Off to the bullfights they go! After some time Danny realises that his one-way conversation has told him nothing about Julian himself, after some probing Julian reluctantly opens up to Danny and informs him that he is in fact A Hit-man!!! Oh I mentioned that above didn't I? Let's just move on… Danny is a middle class everyman and is understandably blown away – so to speak – by the news he has been chillaxing with a real life hit-man. He questions Julian about the various aspects of the 'game' until Julian offers to take him on a dry run. This goes so well that Julian asks an aghast Danny to ride co-pilot with him on a real job.6 months later… Julian is still on the job, but is jaded, noticeably slower, and slipping… his facilitator tells him to life his game or he will be 'retired'.Julian concocts a plan to extricate himself from his situation, but it is one that requires Danny's involvement… The Matador has more in common with In Bruges than merely being about hit men. In both films the charm of the film is the interplay between the two leads and the fact that again in both films any thought of PC compromise is thrown out the window. Julian is a grade A w*nker and never pretends he is anything but, aside from his job he knows only alcohol, debauchery and fornication, and he tells Danny (and later his wife Bean) of the same in no uncertain terms. This has been his life for so long now that he simply knows of no other way and can't sugar coat his conversations. (His first reaction to a story about Danny's son's death is to start telling a joke.) This means that wide eyed Danny's reactions to Julian are never less than believable, while he doesn't shrink from the fact that Julian is a hit-man he is nevertheless genuinely scared – and perhaps a little jazzed – at what hanging around Julian might entail.The story is quite simple but I have deliberately left any mention of plot and plot twist out of this review, but I might add that even though The Matador is more about how Danny and Julian interact than what they actually do, the story is worth sticking around for.Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. At a pinch I might recommend In Bruges over The Matador, but you can't go wrong with either..

This film is a real stinker. In every department the lack of expertise is unmissable. From the meandering script to the static and dreary camera-work, the slack editing, and even the hideous typeface chosen for the tiles telling us which country we are now in, it is clear that this is a film made in a rush and on the cheap. As Producer, Pierce Brosnan's motives are clear – he wants a chance to give us an 'edgy' self deprecating performance to prove he can. Director and writer Richard Shephard admits on the DVD extras that this was his chance to work on something substantial, and my guess is that the attraction was that he had the script and was probably prepared to do it for a very reasonable rate. The problem is that the movie rambles from one dreary conversation to the next, interspersed with some gratuitous sex scenes, aimed, I imagine, at proving to the audience that Brosnan still has it, (if indeed he ever had it, his Bond films being distinguished by their lack of charisma).The art direction is clumsy – note the scene where Brosnan in a very unlikeable yellow brown jacket is set amongst a lot of sunshades of a similar unlikeable yellowy brown. The lighting cameraman does a professional job, but the film he shot has been hacked rather than edited with gimmicky and flashy tricks that come from pop promos and which were out of date minutes after they were invented. Huge close ups suddenly interrupt interminable scenes shot in dreary mid-shot recording performances that seem to have been largely untouched by advice from a director.Believe it or not , seventeen (seventeen!!) producers were thought necessary to get this turkey made, supervising a team listed as over 330 strong(!), not including cast, for a film that feels like a two man conversation for large stretches. If Pierce is wondering where the money went, the answer is – not on the screen. Contrast and compare with "The African Queen" – 2 producers and a credited crew of 41, shooting a film in the wild, again mostly made up of conversations between two people. Which is better value for money? Which film would you rather see? I know what I think.