The Matador: Deconstructing Brosnan

(Above [L-R]: Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear)

Pierce Brosnan fans are in for a shock when they see the former Bond’s latest film, The Matador. In essaying the role of Julian Noble—a hitman undergoing a spiritual crisis, seeking counsel from nebbish salesman Greg Kinnear and his wife Hope Davis—Brosnan not only sheds his super-spy image, but does so with the kind of reckless abandon possible only in independent film.

“Of course it’s great that Pierce sort of plays off his image of being super slick and super put-together,” says The Matador’s writer/director Richard Shepard. “In this movie obviously he’s a mess. But I think he also responded to a chance to show a different side of himself, a vulnerability. I mean he’s never shown a vulnerability like this before. He’s almost kind of pathetic, like a puppy dog at some points. He gets to be rude and crude, and at the same time he’s sweet and vulnerable. He’s rude to children, he’s f—ing everything that walks … this is a guy who’s not particularly likable, but somehow you end up liking him.”

Shepard, presently in the midst of a 12-city promotional tour, certainly understands what Brosnan’s character goes through. He’s been there himself. The filmmaker’s feature debut—1991’s The Linguini Incident, with David Bowie and Rosanna Arquette—flopped so hard it forced Shepard to spend years getting out of what he’s termed “movie jail.” But the darkly comedic Matador should prevent any future sentencing. After all, its Sundance premier prompted a bidding war (eventually won by the Weinstein brothers) that made Variety’s front page.

“It was the first script I’ve ever written without an outline,” Shepard says. “It was almost like an exercise: could I write a script without knowing what was going to happen? I hit a few road bumps along the way but, ultimately, every time my instincts from watching movies and writing movies and making movies was to make a left, I made a right turn just to see what would happen.

“To Pierce’s credit, his whole way of looking at this movie was a willingness to try things. I think he’s so used to these Bond movies where you can’t deviate one inch because of the half-a-billion-dollar franchise and 80 studio people breathing down your neck making sure that you don’t deviate.

“On our movie we were trying to deviate as much as possible,” says Shepard, before adding with impish laughter, “We were deviants.”