Review of The Matador (2005) by Anita S — 08 Aug 2008

IF you've played James Bond and want to shake off the shadow of the world's greatest secret agent, what kind of character do you choose?

Sean Connery did some interesting work between Bond gigs - stuff like The Hill, for instance. Even his misfires, like Hitchcock's Marnie, showed a bit of ambition.

By contrast, rather than play a gay cowboy or Johnny Cash, say, Pierce Brosnan has chosen Julian Noble.

Noble is an assassin who really lives for the booze and the birds (in that order). Sound like anyone we know?

In writer-director Richard Shepard's The Matador, Noble is in Mexico to take out his latest target, even though he's obviously coming apart at the seams.

Also in Mexico City is businessman Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear). Danny needs to clinch a crucial deal to ensure he stays above water financially and maintain his ten-year-old marriage to Bean (Hope Davis).

Over a conversation in the hotel bar, Julian and Danny strike up an oddball friendship.

By the film-makers' own admission, Noble is designed as an "anti-Bond" and this is what tempted Brosnan, still smarting from being usurped by Daniel Craig.

In one way, it's a good choice - he's completely removed from his usual smooth image here. But sadly Noble is even more far-fetched then Bond.

A foul-mouthed, larger-than-life bore whose fondness for the bottle is visibly taking its toll, he kills two people in cold blood before the first ten minutes are up - but we're supposed to feel sorry for him when the pressures of the job start to get too much. We never find out who his victims are or why anyone thinks they deserve the bullet, so their deaths prove nothing save the ruthlessness of the main character.

Problem is, Brosnan doesn't play him as ruthless. Indeed, at times he's so slackly directed that you're not sure what he's up to, unless he's after the prize for the biggest ham alive.

Given to setting fire to litter bins, walking through posh hotels in his underwear, jumping into swimming pools with a beer bottle in his hand, weeping while he botches another murder and dancing to Frank Sinatra's In The Wee Small Hours, he is the most conspicuous hitman in history. In the real world, he'd last about five seconds.

The film hinges on his preposterous friendship with Danny and a last-minute twist in which Julian acts completely out of character. For all its tiresome, would-be wacky "irony" the film never makes you laugh and the most ironic thing about it is its teeth-rotting sentimentality. Supposedly Brosnan's moment in the sun, the show is stolen by the unshowy and intelligent Kinnear and Davis, who quite simply act him off the screen, while talented actors like Philip Baker Hall and Dylan Baker are wasted in trivial roles.

Perhaps one day they'll remake The Saint or bring back Remington Steele. Until they do, Mr Brosnan should pick his roles more carefully.