Watch The Matador For Free

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Strong and Moving!

Don't Believe the Hype

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I can't list this movie as one of my favorite movies but it does have two of my favorite actors reminding me why they are. I have always loved Pierce Brosnan as far back as Remington Steel. I feel he was robbed of the James Bond gig in his prime but was still glad when he finally was cast as 007. I have found Greg Kinnear to be a most versatile actor. He really has a true range. If he was a singer he would be Mariah Carey in her heyday.I did not find this move to be action packed but what it lacked in action it made up for in content. I truly enjoyed the friendship these men had. I also can understand the way their friendship developed and feel that in the given circumstances anyone could end up following the same sequence of events.I did not like this movie enough to watch it again alone but I would watch it with someone else so that they could experience both the interesting story line and two great actors working together to offer a quality product.

In The Matador, Pierce Brosnan plays a weary, boozy contract killer who just wants to be friends with Walter Mitty-like Greg Kinnear. Sounds like perfect casting, but the two leads don't really mesh, and the movie plods along endlessly, halfheartedly throwing in a twist near the end that only slightly mitigates the dullness.Julian Noble trots the globe, shooting, stabbing, and exploding those whom he's paid to terminate. He's not a likable chap, this Julian. He likes his liquor strong and his girls young, if you know what I mean. After a job in Mexico City, Julian learns he may be on his way out of his amorphous organization; he then bumps into Danny Wright (Kinnear), a businessman who believes he's just made a successful pitch to a local company. Julian comes off as kind of a rude jerk who may or not be telling the truth, but once he convinces (truthfully) Danny that he (Julian) is indeed a paid assassin, the two sort of become pals.It's a typical mismatched-buddies scenario - the loner and the married man, the odd duck and the straight arrow. Danny is married to Bean (Hope Davis), who becomes a little starstruck herself when she learns of Julian's occupation. But what of Julian's future? Will he soon be rubbed out by one of his own coworkers? This seems like a role tailor made for Brosnan, kind of a down-on-his-luck James Bond, but for some reason the character is a nasty, tough-to-read creep. Is he sincere or a sociopath? Is he being funny or deadly serious? When he pulls the old messing-with-you trope once too often, you start to wonder what he's all about - and you get no real satisfactory answers.The twist is okay, but in even a decent thriller it would have been terrific. Here it's just sort of there, as if the writers had realized they needed to tack on something a little off the beaten path and just kind of shoehorned it into the story. The Matador isn't incomprehensible, it's just maddeningly incoherent.

Brosnan's performance of a lifetime. Utterly compelling, beautiful and tragic. If only more people would give this movie a chance. Comparable to Grosse Point Blank on many levels it contains the same multiple layers of character detail and deeper message behind the surface detail, minus the action. The movie's title may have contributed to its relative quiet box office performance, acting more as a metaphor for the movie's protagonist than an exciting description of the splendid script. Real, honest performances grace this movie and even gives us an ending John Hughes would have been proud of in his 80's pomp. I would have loved to have seen Brosnan receive the big accolades for his performance, and to be honest it exasperates me to know it was largely ignored by the big awards, a best supporting actor nomination at the Golden Globes the only real acknowledgement.

A chance encounter between a salesman and a hit-man changes both their lives. This is an odd film that works, an impressive effort for writer-director Shepard. In a daringly unglamorous role that is a far cry from James Bond, Brosnan is surprisingly effective as the lonely hit-man who starts to buckle under the stress of his job, but is unable to connect emotionally with anyone to help him cope. Kinnear is equally good as the salesman, a decent fellow with a void in his life. Davis is fine as Kinnear's flirtatious wife. Mainly a character study, the film is rewarding because it feels fresh and unpredictable, an extremely dark comedy.