The Matador & The Libertine

Almost nothing came out this week on DVD, save these two entries from the newly-formed Weinstein Company. These films were both dumped into theaters with zero fanfare on off weekends, with Sundance pick-up The Matador barely making a peep alongside all the high-profile Christmas 2005 releases and The Libertine showing on a few screens earlier this year. What's interesting is that they're both pretty good, if offbeat and difficult to market. If anything, they're intelligent and unexpected to such a degree, I'm kind of surprised these concepts were made into films in the first place.

The Matador

I'm sure someone has already written a paper about filmdom's post-Pulp Fiction obsession with comedies about hitmen. It's probably the one underground, criminal enterprise that's constantly celebrated by the movies. You'll occasionally see a comedy about guys who sell weed or girls who embark on an ill-fated crime spree, but generally, anti-social or homicidal activities are frowned upon by mainstream filmmakers.

What is it about professional murderers that's so appealing? Perhaps it's because we are confronted by so much senseless killing each day - in foreign wars and on our own streets - that the idea of clean, efficient murder for hire seems almost comforting in comparison? Or is it just that, like lawyers who defend chronic polluters or telcom executives who turn over private information to the government and fight net neutrality, Americans have become blase about evils done as a required part of ones job? Sure, a guy might shoot people for a living, but only because he's got to earn a living! What should he do, starve to death?

A running joke in Grosse Point Blank finds John Cusack's hitman encountering nothing but nonchalant reactions to the news that he's become a hired assassin. "Do you have to go to school for that, or can you just jump right in?" asks a high school buddy played by Jeremy Piven.

Richard Shepard's The Matador is like that joke stretched out to feature length. That's not to say it's a one-note movie (although it is, in some ways), but it's made with this same kind of curious, bouncy enthusiasm, a wide-eyed fascination at the notion of a trained expert killer. A rare film that's content to take its time and tell a simple little story well, rather than try to pile on incidents and style into some kind of bloated extravananza, The Matador pauses occasionally to consider the general merits of a life spent on the road murdering strangers for money, but spends most of its time setting up some likable characters and letting them slowly impact one another's lives.



In the best performance he's given since taking over the Bond franchise, Pierce Brosnan plays Julian Noble, a crass, boorish hitman who realizes late in life that he's a loser who has no friends. Travelling all around the world working what he calls "corporate gigs," Julian's only real human contact is his shadowy handler (Philip Baker Hall) and the prostitutes on whom he spends much of his earnings.

In a hotel bar one night after working a job in Mexico, Julian meets Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), an entrepeneur desperate to kickstart his latest venture. Their conversation is awkward and stilted, culminating with Danny stomping out of the bar in a huff. But Julian remains undaunted. Now that he's actually spoken with someone about something other than fucking or killing, he's become addicted. He invites his new "friend" to go and see a bullfight.

These Mexico sequences take up a little less than half of the film, and what's surprising is that they don't seem to rush headlong into some kind of conflict. Shepard just lets Brosnan and Kinnear stretch out a bit, getting comfortable in their characters and building up a repoire, while showing off the colorful tapestry of David Tattersall's bright, airy cinematography. This is how old movies used to develop - the first half was just about getting your bearings before the real conflict the story even emerged.

Conflict, we're told in screenwriting classes, defines moviedom. If there isn't some kind of conflict going on between the characters, you don't have a film. Shepard's plot will eventually develop some genuine clashes and rivalries - particularly after Julian shows up on Danny's door in Denver six months after their initial meeting - but he arrives there liesurely, only after we've become invested in Julian and Danny as people. This makes a lot more sense to my mind than the current Hollywood philosophy, in which the line that will appear in the trailer summarizing the plot must be spoken in the first 10 minutes of the movie.

"If we don't recover that unit within one hour, everyone on this ship is going to die!"

Shepard's approach is refreshing and unexpected, and it's one such element in the film. Without giving too much away, there's an interesting homosexual undercurrent gliding just underneath the film's central relationship. Julian intimates early on in the movie that's he's potentially bisexual (referencing the possiblitiy that he sucks cock upon first meeting Danny), and then later seems to make something of a pass at his new friend.

Later on, much of the plot will revolve around a secretive late-night encounter between Julian and Danny. Shepard saves the information about that night until late in the film, so I won't reveal anything here, but it remains something of an unspoken issue throughout the entire film.

Regardless of the exact nature of their relationship, it's clear that Danny and Julian are changed by getting to know one another, and it's in these small observances that the film takes on a genuinely sweet kind of tone that's, again, something different from a genre that typically produces shrill, nihilistic fare of the Whole Nine Yards variety.

What really sets the film apart, however, are the comic stylings of Pierce Brosnan, a guy whose James Bond was suave but a bit of a stiff. Here, he's not just more relaxed, but he's something of a public menace. Flirting with adolescents, insulting overweight strangers and slamming margaritas while aiming high-powered rifles, Julian's a guy who has lived so long without fear that he's utterly unprepared for the feeling when it finally arrives. The scenes where he's literally crippled by anxiety may be stretching believability just a touch, but the character himself is kind of a delight to be around and, like almost everyone in the film, intelligent.

We see his calculating side at play in the film's best sequence, in whcih Julian demonstrates for a disbelieving Danny how he would improvise an assassination in a Mexican arena.

Hope Davis enters the film about halfway through and does great work as Danny's earthy wife "Bean," whose anything-goes attitude towards Julian's line of work mirrors her husband's. When Julian shows up unannounced in the middle of the night, she gets one line off, about how she's unaccustomed to being up with guests at 2:30 in the morning, that's extremely natural and warm, the exact sort of thing you'd hear hanging out in someone's living room listening to old records in the middle of the night after a few bottles of wine.

Ultimately, the film isn't really as good as the sum of its parts. It's funny without ever being really hilarious, and likable without feeling essential. I'm sure it will find an audience on DVD that will appreciate its sharp attention to character and engaging performances, but it's not the sort of thing I'd expect to watch over and over again, noticing throwaway lines or missed but vital details. It's just nice to see that this kind of old-fashioned storytelling hasn't completely died out, that there are still films focused on transporting you to exotic locales to meet interesting people rather than just exploding pirate ships and reptilian airline passengers.

The Libertine

A few years ago, I wrote a surreal, Bunuel-inspired screenplay called "Evil Will Prevail," featuring the Earl of Rochester as one of the main characters. I first learned about 17th century poet and nobleman John Wilmot in English 10A back in my UCLA days, and found him a fascinating figure ripe with dramatic possiblities. It's not surprising to me, then, that playwright Stephen Jeffreys chose the Earl as a subject for his play "The Libertine," and not surprising that he and Laurence Dunsmore have translated the work into a film.

The result is a mainly-successful period drama about the final few years of Wilmot's (Johnny Depp) brief life, during which he falls in love with an up-and-coming actress (Samantha Morton) and dies painfully of syphillis. As you'd expect from a play, the dialogue is extremely heightened and theatrical, and struck my mainly-ignorant ears as authentic for the period. This may be off-putting for some, and it took me a few minutes to adjust, but after a slow beginning, the film does develop some rather interesting ideas about atheism, loyalty and what it means to be truly radical.



The central contradiction of Wilmot's life is his ability to write beautiful verse despite the fact that he's an evil bastard who only cares about his own pleasure. His wife Elizabeth (Rosamund Pike) agonizes over the poetry he writes about her beauty and their shared love - how can the same man who produces these writings continually spurn and humiliate her year after year?

Wilmot, of course, has no time to worry about his duties as a husband. As with all institutions of authority or responsibility, he has no time to worry about marital vows. Having freed himself early on in life from any kind of belief in God (he suggests late in the film that his atheism is an intrinsic part of his character), Wilmot believes that he can essentially behave in any manner he pleases. He argues early on with the actress, Elizabeth Barry, that regardless of what he does when faced with a particular decision, the universe as a whole will not be in any way affected. Therefore, he can do whatever he wants.

It's a philosophy that may not get him in trouble with any deity, but causes him considerable problems in his life as a landed aristocrat in the England of Charles II (John Malkovich). When asked to take his seat in the House of Lords and support the Catholic lineage of Charles, he immediately refuses to engage in government. His condescention towards commoners like his friend George Etheridge (Tom Hollander), who write out of neccessity rather than fancy, costs him friendships and respect. Of course, his freewheeling approach towards sexuality eventually costs him his good looks and his life, and his excessive drinking eventually turns him into something of an alcoholic wretch. Finally, when asked to write a grand production to celebrate the arrival of a new ambassador from France, Wilmot humiliates the king with a raunchily satirical production.

Depp's predictably terrific in these sequences, giving Wilmot an uncontrollable, manic streak that raises interesting questions about the nature of his rebelliousness. Is he still a radical if he's not in complete control of his outbursts? He admits at one point to being fundamentally unable to refrain from speaking his mind, even when he knows the consequences of such frank honesty may be dire. Could history be confusing a life philosophy with some form of low-grade mental illness, the same kind of madness that could have inspired his compositions?

If anything, I'd say the film kind of holds back on some of the Earl's more outrageous behavior. This was a man who stood for the ultimate in drunken, mysogynist debauchery. There are some references early on in the film to Wilmot actually kidnapping and ravishing his wife-to-be at the tender age of 18, but this is presented as a hazily-recalled erotic fantasy. In reality, we know that such behavior was rather commonplace for the Libertines, who as noblemen tended to consider themselves above the law.

Wilmot warns us in an early monologue that he will not be likable, but there has been some attempt to soften the Earl of Rochester for modern audiences who couldn't stomach the open celebration of a free-spirited rapist, no matter how wonderful his ensuing poetry. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but I do feel like the movie could have pushed the envelope a bit more in fulfilling this early promise to keep Wilmot despicable. For a movie entitled The Libertine, there's not a whole lot of actual on-screen hedonism. Sure, everybody's drunk, but the sex is tame and the violence is minimal. That's not how I would have done it in my Earl of Rochester movie. But alas, that train has sailed.