Wow!
The Matador is Pierce Brosnan's best performance ever and one of the finest black comedies in years! If you like quirky, sleazy, dark comedies where the humor arises naturally from the characters and their situations, this film is for you.
Pierce Brosnan plays burned-out international assassin Julian Noble, a complete sociopath with no friends, who kills the pain inside with liquor and sex. One night in between jobs, he runs into salesman Greg Kinnear, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship...
It's hilarious watching the lonely, friendless assassin struggle to actually engage a normal person in friendly conversation, because he has to overcome years of training to avoid relationships as well as his own personal demons and sociopathic tendencies. He's not a nice guy by any stretch of the imagination (although he might be as far as cold, ruthless assassins go). Pierce plays this character perfectly; we get a two-dimensional, flawed but charming person who just happens to kill people for a living. It was superbly realistic; exactly how I imagine one of these people might be in real life. Charming, yes; likable, sure; but not particularly sympathetic. He is a manipulative, lying murderer, but that doesn't mean you can't hang out and have fun with him. Certainly, it's a pleasure to watch!
The film starts with a bang (literally) and plays well for the first hour but bogs down [i]just a little bit[/i] after that (I don't want to hand out any spoilers), before picking up again for the climax. I was laughing out loud, cringing in delight, and trying to second-guess what was going to happen next the whole time. This is definitely worth a rental or even owning--and I hardly ever buy any DVDs anymore.
