‘Matador’ Is Something Of A Dark Horse,

And Certainly Isn’t For All Tastes

Summer is gone and with it goes the warmer weather, the longer days and the big, flashy Hollywood blockbusters. Ushered in with the fall season are cooler, crisp evenings, vibrant, colorful leaves and fun seasonal festivals featuring robust pumpkins, hayrides and corn mazes.

Also, significantly, it’s a time of football and new fall TV shows, which generally also means fewer outdoor outings and increased, indoor couch potato-dom. For those who might look to follow that trend (or perhaps are unwilling to buck it) and want to pop their own popcorn for an evening, I’d like to take a look at one of the DVD releases from the summer, The Matador, which spent five weeks recently among the top ten most popular rentals across the country.

Starring Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear, The Matador follows the strange, inter-connected paths of veteran hit man Julius Noble (Brosnan) and timorous salesman Danny Wright (Kinnear), who first meet at a hotel bar in Mexico City. Julian is crass and charming, funny and frightening. Danny is not. They are seemingly polar opposites. Danny is in town to try to pull off a near impossible business deal. Julian, who efficiently “facilitates fatalities,” is kicking back after a job done well and early. But Julian, confident as he is, even when striding through a sea of booze and prostitutes, is also lonely. Just as you think they might “meet cute,” and become friends in that Hollywood kind of buddy movie way (you know, the whole opposites attract, watch them fight, watch them bond, kind of way), Julian awkwardly tells a profane joke right after Danny opens up and tells him about the painful experience of losing his only child. Not exactly your typical scene.

In fact, the movie, written and directed by Richard Shepard, is quite deftly scripted and becomes an engrossing, often darkly funny character study that defies most of the audience’s expectations. Just as you think you can guess where it’s going, it slyly sidesteps, if just by a little bit. There are no strange left-hand turns, no gasping twists, a la M. Night Shayamalan. Nor is it the kind of acerbic, self-referential flick that became popular after Tarantino’s success with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. It doesn’t even stoop to being a send-up of Brosnan’s former, iconic role… not that it isn’t fun seeing him so completely free from the character of Bond, James Bond. It’s just that isn’t particularly the point.

No, Shepard and his skillful cast, including Hope Davis as Danny’s beloved wife, affectionately nicknamed “Bean,” make it clear they’re about more than just genre stereotypes or formulaic tropes. It’s particularly during a scene where Julian takes Danny to a bullfight, that Shepard and crew take the film up another notch. It’s a wonderfully played, well-written scene that’s incredibly funny, yet also tensely dramatic. Julian finally reveals his profession to the clueless Danny… and his reaction is priceless. It also takes their relationship to different place and the rest of the film plays out very interestingly.

The Matador is a very entertaining movie that is certainly not for all audiences. Considering that one of the characters is an assassin, the movie is surprisingly free of gore and violence, though plenty of violence (as well as its consequences) is implied.

Rather, the film’s restrictive rating comes from its very frank language and a few very suggestive and explicit sex sequences. Brosnan’s Julian is one of the most crass, amoral beings you’ll see on the screen, but he’s also undeniably charismatic, and many of the scenes have a context. Still, it won’t be for all tastes.

That said, The Matador boasts quite a bit of rich subtext and asks us not to explore the differences in human nature, but the similarities. By the end of the film, Julian’s profession doesn’t really matter (he could have been an accountant, though granted, that wouldn’t have made for quite the same movie) because his inner struggles are common and the questions both he and Danny ask are universally relevant. The Matador is rated R for strong sexual content and pervasive language.