The Matador

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So, two strangers walk into a bar and order margaritas. The first stranger downs his margarita and says, “I’m a mild-mannered sales guy. I live in the first phase of a nice track development, in the heart of the country. My wife is a petite dish-water blond, and though most people wouldn’t give her a second glance, I think she’s hot. I sell integrated multi-functional non- descriptional units. It’s fascinating- really. My career? I’ve had my ups and downs, but right now I’m bouncing back . . . I think. He turns and asks the other stranger, “So, what do you do?” The other stranger downs his margarita, turns suavely on his stool and says, “I’m a hitman.”

I imagine the pitch for The Matador went something like the above when writer/director Richard Shepard shopped this story around to various production companies. Mild mannered sales guy, Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), meets broke-down, on-his-last leg killer guy, Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan), and the two support each other through their particular career dilemmas. The movie set-up is a bit Hollywood, as this initial ground-work takes place well away from Wright’s home base, Denver, where, it just so happens, Noble recently completed his last assignment. Then, it just so happens, that the two end up meeting at a hotel bar in Mexico, both on business and both coming to terms with the possibility that they have somehow slipped past the nadir of their careers. Eventually they part only to meet again when Noble shows up at Wright’s home, in the middle of a snowy Denver night. He has come to beg for Wright’s help with one, last hit.

In my past I spent enough time in bars to know that one really does meet an odd variety of characters whiling away hours on the bar stool. My particular one was a Seminole dancer who’s dance attire was lost in transport, that’s another movie. But, there are two other reasons the suspension of disbelief works in this story. The first is the manner in which the script builds key elements right at the outset and makes this a funny, believable premise. While it’s not a laugh-out-loud piece, it is dark and wickedly fun, kind of like the Cohen Brothers meet Quintine Tarantino. Secondly the actors develop complex characters we can accept as regular people. In the real world there are sales guys and there are people who are hitmen, and of course any one of us sales guys could meet a killer, at a bar, and be somewhat okay with it under the right circumstances. Brosnan has been searching for years, for a role that would take him past his Bond image and in this story he takes un-suave, distasteful, obnoxious to new heights. Kinnear nails his role with little moments that you can imagine as your moments, and Hope Davis as Bean, Danny’s wife, shines as the introvert who can barely contain herself when she learns that her late night visitor is a hitman.

It’s difficult for films of this kind to have any heart. Mostly because films like this have a strong drive to be weird and that overwhelms everything else. This film drifts into some moments of sentimentality that are vague but right at the end one small fact is revealed that allows us to see the heart of the piece …. so it fails at being funny but succeeds at being quirky with heart. Olé.