THE MATADOR

...essentially a few good scenes held together with a lot of blank tape.

If you've seen the clip from The Matador where the little boy says, "see ya, wouldn't wanna be ya," and Pierce Brosnan fires back, "smell ya, shouldn't have to tell ya," then you can go ahead and tick this movie off your list. It's essentially a few good scenes held together with a lot of blank tape.

The film gets off to a splashy start as Julian Noble (Brosnan) gallivants around the world, shooting people and causing explosions with the cool calm of, oh, let's say James Bond. He drinks a lot, picks up easy women, and from this we learn that he's an assassin. Meanwhile, Danny (Greg Kinnear) is a painfully ordinary man married to Carolyn (Hope Davis). His future hinges on a business trip, and while engaging in some quick goodbye lovin' on the counter top, a tree crashes through the kitchen ceiling. All of this set to a hip soundtrack, and leads you to believe you're in for a rollicking good time with a truly original movie.

Sadly, it's all downhill from here. Danny and Julian meet by chance in Mexico and visit for awhile at the hotel bar. Julian announces that he's been fornicating for two hours, and we know this to be true because we saw him. You can only hope that he took a shower, or at least washed his hands, but from the looks of him, this seems unlikely. He's the sort of guy who makes you want to grab your drink and quietly slide to the other end of the bar, and things only get worse when he opens his mouth. When Danny confides that he lost his little boy in a school bus accident, Julian tries to change the subject by making a crass joke.

This seems like a good time for the boys to part ways, doesn't it? But Julian is really lonely, and he just wants to keep talking and talking and talking to Danny. He visits his hotel room later that evening, and the next day they go to a bullfight together. At the bullfight, Julian shows Danny exactly how a carefully choreographed assassination takes place, and comes thisclose to making it happen. Exhilarated and a little frightened, Danny heads home with plenty of weird stories to tell about his trip.

The following Christmas Julian shows up on Danny's doorstep in the middle of the night. He and Carolyn invite him in, and a good time is had by all. Julian shows Carolyn his gun, and they all talk and laugh and drink until the wee hours of the morning. The consensus is that even if Julian is an assassin with rather loose morals, he's basically a good guy - probably the sort of hit man who only takes out people who have it coming, like mob bosses and drug lords.

At this point, we're two thirds of the way through The Matador, and there is still no indication of what the movie's about. I don't mean that you can't follow the plot - I mean you can't figure out why the hell you're still watching. Where is this going, and why haven't we gotten anywhere so far?

As it turns out, Julian's getting a little soft around the edges, and he wants to retire. The trouble is that you can't exactly give your two weeks notice when you're in the assassination business, and now Julian's boss wants to kill him. This is where Danny comes in. If he can just act as a distraction, Julian can take out the man who wants to kill him, and everyone will live happily ever after. Naturally Danny agrees.

Wait, what? Why would a schmo like Danny want to get involved in this? We-ell, as a postscript we learn that Julian did a very big favor for Danny down in Mexico. He helped him through a dark moment, if you will, and now Danny owes him. Hmm, wow. What a convenient development. Wouldn't it have been nice to know about that little bonding moment when it happened? Oh, but that might have given the story weight, or meaning, or made it slightly compelling, and apparently the director was going for more of a montage effect.

Pierce Brosnan gives an excellent performance as Julian, and it is temporarily amusing to see him play someone so different from his suave Remington Steele persona. Greg Kinnear does his standard Neurotic Guy thing, and he finds plenty of opportunities to use the wide-eyed innocent look he's been perfecting for so long. He's a decent foil to Brosnan, but the two aren't given enough to do. The Matador should be a buddy movie, but it plays like a series of vignettes with the segues taken out. In the end you just want to give it an irreverent little wave and say, "See ya. Wouldn't wanna be ya."