The Matador [2005]

If you want to watch some movie that will relax you this one is perfect. Even the premise of the movie sounds like a mainstream milking: a hitman and a regular guy walk into a bar. However, The Matador is a strange movie, almost a spoof of these commercial endeavours. Buddy movies reached their zenith in the nineties and it’s really nice to see someone trying to revive the genre with such a impressive effort. The fucking grind gets to us all, even hitman. This “humanization” of a “cold-blooded” killer created an unusual dynamic between him and our Average Joe (Kinnear). I hate to use the word subversive with this movie, but have to. By showing us that even hitman have the same problems as us, it makes realize who the real enemy is: boundaries created by religion and ideology.

The story revolves around the relationship of Julian Noble (a ruthless hitman tired of life, without any friends and longing for any type of stability in his life) and Danny Wright (a salesman with an almost perfect life, good job, beautiful wife, but still very dull and boring life for this shy guy), and how they will help each other out in a time of need. The Matador is a light comedy, with a bit of dark humor and incredibly depth that you can choose to explore, or not. With very good character development, so good you will actually care what happens to the characters, this is also an interesting character study. With good performances from both main actors (Brosnan and Kinnear), this movie is absolutely recommended.

Director: Richard Shepard

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Adam Scott, Portia Dawson, Philip Baker Hall

Fun Facts: The film was shot in just 40 days in and around Mexico City.

Rating:

IMDb Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365485/