Pierce Brosnan talks about his latest movie `The Matador`

A lifetime of cold-blooded murder chased down with copious amounts of alcohol and endless rounds of indiscriminate sex has left professional hit man Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan) at the end of his tether. Good thing he stumbles upon earnest businessman Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear) in a Mexico City hotel bar — the brush with normalcy may just be Julian's path back to sanity, even as the killer's dark soul may be Danny's spur to inspect the trajectory of his own life. IFC News' Dan Persons sat down with Brosnan to discuss writer/director Richard Shepard's dark, dark comedy:

How the hell do you make stubble look so good?
I have no idea. It's a tricky question to answer. I don't think my wife would agree with you, though.

My wife would agree with me.
Well... good.

Julian has a few socialization issues, doesn't he?
He is adrift in life. He is rudderless, he is charismatically mangled, and yet a great vulgarian. He's a hit man, he's a guy who's having a nervous breakdown, and therein hangs the comedy and the humanity of the guy, and his interaction with Danny. The piece has its own proscenium arch, and creates its own world — I thought Richard did a good job of that. It made me laugh — I loved his one-liners; I love the filthy mouth on Julian juxtaposed to the wholesomeness of Danny.



He doesn't seem to realize the effect he has on people.
Well, he's so distant from himself — the synapses are all crossed. His way of communicating is deadened by booze and ugly sex in seedy parts of the world, and also just too much blood on his hands and killing people. And yet at the same time, this psychopathic mind has this wonderful way of manipulating others around him, whether through fear or charm or some beguiling innocence that he knows how to attach himself to. There's a certain sense that there's an arrested development there, he never really got past being a 22 year old.

Setting aside the psychopathic element, it seems the situation Julian finds himself in is not unlike one that, say, an actor famed for playing a charismatic, globe-hopping superspy might confront. Did you take that into account?
It did not go unnoticed. I'd be a fool not to notice the emblems of past life mixed in with the deconstruction of this character's psychological makeup, the farce-like scenario of walking across a hotel lobby in your underwear, just the sheer buffoonery of that image. I thought, Why not, if it gets a laugh? It was already in there; Richard had put it in there. I wasn’t trying to dismantle anything that had gone before in the world of playing Bond or the image of Bond as Thomas Crown [or] Remington Steele. I just thought this was a great acting role, a challenge.

You've talked about getting back to the stage. Did this story's theatrical nature — its reliance on dialogue — appeal to you?
Very much. I've been reading plays, and have been offered a few back in Ireland, and this has a very play-like structure: [Neil] Jordan; "Wait Until Dark"; and Hunter S. Thompson; whatever. It just appeals to me when you have rich text like this, how to keep it going and keep it alive. And it seemed to make sense when I read it, it had a nice simplicity. Richard wrote it with a delightful, uncensored stream-of-consciousness, with the simple premise of two men who meet in a bar. It was an easy read, and easy to play.

Now being your own producer, what challenges do you want to pick for yourself?
More drama. More character. I would like to be able to play the hero roles, the leading man roles — there's time enough still for all of that to be done. I've never really said, "This is a definite direction I want to go in." I think I've turned a corner with "The Matador," I think new ground has been broken, and that's always refreshing and exciting. The possibilities seem endless.

"The Matador" opens in New York and Los Angeles on December 23, and will be rolled out nationwide in January.

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