The Matador
Director: Richard Shepard
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 1.0
Familiar story about an eccentric hit man (Pierce Brosnan) who befriends a nerdy by-the-numbers type who's down on his luck and decides to tell him all about the assassination business. Brosnan's pretty funny in a spoof of his James Bond persona, but most of this is crummy, reminding me of such 'offbeat' fare with a similar theme as The Whole Nine Yards and The Mexican (and certainly not Almodóvar's Matador, a different movie altogether); when it finally gets around to its forced sentimental moments (a dead child, alas), it's just begging for a sword in its neck. In the Maybe-It's-The-Booze-Talking-Dept.: towards the end, don't Brosnan and Kinnear, with their mustaches and hair (and Kinnear's circular glasses), look a little like Stalin and Lenin? Don't smirk: I had to keep my mind occupied somehow.
