01/17/2010 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Film Review: The Matador

Here’s a movie that really slipped through the cracks, The Matador with Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear and Hope Davis. A chance meeting in a bar changes the lives of two men forever. A hit man meets a businessman in a chance encounter and forms a friendship, which makes for an excellent black comedy.

This is quite a different role for Pierce: he’s not his usual aristocratic self. His character is more on the repulsive and obnoxious side, yet still likable. It is a great role for him, he stretches his range and does some of his best work. Kinnear and Davis handle their assignments equally well. I had the chance to work with Ms. Davis in 1996 on Next Stop Wonderland. She was a pleasure to work with. She brings a unique touch to each roll she plays and pushes to find the subtleties ...

11/17/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Highly Developed

“I’m as serious an erection problem.” I loved this film the first time I saw it because this is a classic ordinary guy meets a not-so-ordinary guy… with a little something extra. The timing and pace of this picture is impeccable: the first forty-five minutes focus on how Greg Kinnear, a businessman, and Pierce Brosnan, an assassin, meet and the last forty-five minutes focus on how their lives have changed after their meeting. By the end of the movie, I realized that from the first scene to the last, it kept getting better and better–I wanted to for it to be longer because I was really interested in getting to know the characters a little more. Once you think a character is one way, that assumption is blurred by another scene so you have to make room for reevaluation. Greg Kinnear is perfe...

Rating of
4/4 

10/26/2008 (0 of 0 found this helpful)

Brosnan at his best

Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear) is a struggling businessman who is on his last legs, vying for a big business opportunity in Mexico City against strong competition; Julian (Pierce Brosnan) is a hitman, or as he would call it a “facilitator of fatalities” also in Mexico City and also on his last legs. Danny meets Julian in a bar where they forge at first an uneasy friendship that eventually builds to almost a partnership. Eventually, Julian will botch a job and is forced to go on the run from his bosses and finds the only person he can really call “a friend” is Danny. And just maybe, Danny will help him do something that will get him off his own hit list.

The initial concept for The Matador sounds like a formulaic action comedy with the opportunity for some chase scenes, some black humor a...

Rating of
3/4