Review

The Matador
Director: Richard Shepard
Writer: Richard Shepard
Cast:  Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear
Genre: Crime/Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 96mins
Tagline: A hitman and a salesman walk into a bar...

This is a film that works on two levels.
Produced by Pierce Brosnan's company (told you James Bond pays well).
One, very average middle American couple, Greg Kinnear, in a surprisingly good performance,  and Hope Davis (now she’s worth the price of your admission ticket) struggling to come to terms with loss of a child, at the crossroads of life, career and their future.
A chance encounter with a jaded  ‘Corporate hit man’ Pierce Brosnan who  in one of the best lines in the movie: “The best cocktail party story you'll ever tell” while trying to save his career and strike a business deal...while on  a business trip to Mexico.
You almost want him to say the name's Bond..James Bond, but he doesn’t.
An unlikely relationship between two opposites, one a struggling corporate executive and the other, a jaded hit man who has lost all semblance of any form of a normal human relationship.
This unlikely couple  thrown together by circumstance — one shocked beyond his wits and the other who's beyond shock — forge a relationship that seems to break just as it starts to develop. Till of course the “denouement”.
Brosnan  in a real bravado performance that walks the thin line between sheer bravura, and  a  strange vulnearbility returns after a few failures in the "hit man" business.
One final  score that will set them all  free; one last payment of all debts owed and a family that loses a son, but by default gains this charming dangerous stranger as a member of their life, and a partaker of their pain.
Of course the film has its flaws: the gratituous sex scenes and the sometimes over-the-top glib lines but it does work.
The cast is good. Davis, however confirms her presence as a luminous thing of beauty her — scene with Greg Kinnear in the ‘admission of failure and redemption’ scene is a stand out performance.
And the second level, as a wag who saw the film with me commented: When James Bond retires does he become an inept hit man? They have a new James Bond don’t they?
But it's worth a watch.
— Sunil D’Souza