Feature Interview by Peter Fraser
‘I never saw it as closing the door or anything like that. I just thought that it was a wonderfully perverse theatrical piece.’ So says Pierce Brosnan about The Matador, a new movie in which he plays Julian Noble: an alcoholic, mother-fixated, bisexual assassin. Despite their shared vocation, Julian seems a long way from James Bond.
‘I’ve been aware for some time of the danger of painting myself into a corner and I’ve had the desire to break out of a mould’ says Brosnan, ‘but you know the success of Bond has been bountiful to us as a company and to me as an actor.’
Sporting a goatee-beard and a jet-lagged smile Brosnan is relaxed and self-deprecating. Now that the future of Bond has been decided, the most recent inhabitant of that role is keen to talk about his latest film. The Matador sees Brosnan exploding his iconic image with an edgy performance in an effective comedy-thriller.
‘I loved the audacity of the character and ultimately, the heart of the story. You feel for these characters. Julian’s been killing for years and while he’s lost his soul, somewhere deep down in the catacombs of his heart, there’s a flame.’
Richard Shepherd, the writer-director of The Matador, originally intended to shoot the script as a low-budget digital film but sent it to Brosnan’s company Irish Dreamtime as a sample of his writing. ‘Before you know it’ Shepherd has said, ‘I’m getting a call from Pierce saying he wants to produce and star in it.’
The story follows jet-setting assassin Julian and desperate family man Danny Wright, played appealingly by Greg Kinnear, as they find themselves thrown together in Mexico City. Although they’re very different people they’re both at turning points in their lives and unsure about what to do next. Talking to each other in a bar one night they become friends, with life-changing consequences for both of them.
The result is a likeable film that’s not so lightweight as it first appears. It’s also Brosnan’s most convincing attempt yet to break out of the traditional leading man role and suggests that his most interesting work may be ahead of him. He plays Julian as a narcissistic, seedy South London geezer with a penchant for kinky sex.
In one eye-catching scene Julian is caught with a lady in a compromising clinch by her pooch, which then attempts to enter the fray. Brosnan laughs at the memory: ‘that could be the most embarrassing situation I’ve ever been in. You know, you’re with a lady with your pants around your ankles; your hands full and the dog’s handler is round there putting smarties in your pant legs so that the dog will bite.’
He admits to moments of doubt about a role that upends his previous persona to such an extent. ‘Actually when the financier said ‘yes’ I took a gulp and then jumped ship; the character was having his way with men, women, animals, the whole thing. So we went back and addressed a few issues. Less was more.’
While the script may have been toned down it’s still hardly what we’re used to from 007 or Thomas Crowne. There have been rumours that Tarantino expressed an interest in shooting a Bond film, and was declined, but Julian is almost Tarantino-esque in the way that he revises the archetype. After his initial reservations Brosnan wholeheartedly committed himself to Shepherd’s iconoclasm.
As an illustration, he recalls shooting another scene in which Julian crosses a hotel lobby in nothing but small black Speedos displaying a certain amount of middle-aged girth. ‘The producer Beau was saying ‘you can wear a bathrobe or maybe pyjamas for at least one take’ and I said ‘no, the train’s left the station Beau! We’re going in!’
To prepare for such a colourful role, Brosnan visited a criminal psychologist to get inside the mind of a psychopath. ‘She read the script and then she broke it down and analysed it as she would any of her cases and I was happy to read her notes.’
‘Then I grew the moustache and I thought that was like the Village People. I thought that Julian would listen to a little bit of that.’ The male members of the crew reportedly grew moustaches in solidarity. Brosnan’s lasted as long as the shoot.
The film strikes a tricky balance between humour and pathos, nowhere more so than in the predicament of its leading characters. Amidst a strong supporting cast, Kinnear plays the straight man to Julian’s outlandish personality but his own character Danny has serious issues including mounting debts and a recent bereavement.
Equally Julian may be something of a clown but he is a trained killer who faces assassination himself if he quits his job. His increasing loneliness makes this a real possibility. Julian, like the film, shows an unexpected sensitivity towards the end of the story as he and Danny help each other with their dilemmas.
‘It’s the darkest version of a man like Bond’ says Shepherd, ‘It’s the complete opposite end of the sort of smooth and perfect superhero.’ ‘Julian is a man who has no one, he’s lonely, sad, a real mess.’ For Brosnan: ‘I think that Julian feels this tickle, this shade of guilt and within that window, a friendship begins.’
Brosnan seems pleased with the opportunity to play such an extreme personality. ‘I was educated as an actor here in London. I went to a really fine drama school and I was taught to play character. Then I went off to America and ended up playing myself for quite a while but deep down I always felt that I was a character actor’.
Although he has not closed the door on Bond he hopes for character roles in the future. ‘I hope to find quieter roles, less leading men, simpler guys and characters. These are roles that I wouldn’t have got. Miramax wouldn’t have called me up for The Matador so we had to go and do it for ourselves.’
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