The Matador; Someone to Watch Over Me

Sometimes movies show up in the mail and we're not sure why. Sometimes Joe gets carried away with his browsing and sometimes I read about some film that seemed interesting at the time. Maybe the director did something else that we liked. Now, The Matador (2005) was one of those films that might have sounded good on paper: an oddball comedy thriller that turns into a buddy pic, with Pierce Brosnan as a hitman who befriends Greg Kinnear as a suburban businessman. Only, as Joe says, the screenplay seemed as though it was written from a book about how to write screenplays. The camerawork and editing felt as though the director came straight from doing music vids and commercials, all showy tracking and zooming and panning. "Is it really homoerotic, or is it just me?" asked Joe. Indeed, Brosnan smokes a lot of fat cigars around Kinnear and seems intent on seducing him, though under the aegis of friendship. In the end, The Matador wants to be a slick, quirky British comedy/gangster thriller like Guy Ritchie's Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels but ends up feeling empty and soulless, just trying too darned hard. "No," said Joe, "it was just a stupid stupid film!"

Someone to Watch Over Me (1987) was next, another Ridley Scott film, coming just after Alien, Bladerunner and Legend. Right off the bat, we had Sting warbling the theme song, and later, that 80s saxophone music. So many movies don't age well because of the music! A working class cop falls in love with the socialite he has been assigned to guard after she witnesses a murder. "Competently done is all you can say about it," said Joe. By the book and bland. Next!