January 12th, 2006

   It’s a wrap. 2005 is over, and here’s what turned up at the end to get us into the New Year. THEMATADOR was a nice year-end surprise worth checking out. I don’t know why 52-year-old Pierce Brosnan, after four hit outings as James Bond, lost his job as the world’s suavest spy. But The Matador is the perfect revenge on his former employers. It’s a savage, breezy, occasionally obscene, and sometimes poignant mix of comedy and crime about a scruffy international contract killer and a meek Denver businessman whose lives become serendipitously intertwined in Mexico City, and Mr. Brosnan has never been better.
As hitman Julian Noble, a cold-blooded killer who loses his nerve, tires of his work ethic and feels close to a nervous breakdown, Mr. Brosnan is a planet away from anything resembling 007 in this comedic film noir. Maybe it’s conscience. Maybe it’s male menopause. But murder for hire just doesn’t have the same old razzle dazzle. One night the hit man (who labels his career as a “facilitator of fatalities”) finds himself frittering away the lonely hours between jobs at a hotel bar in Mexico City, getting drunk on margaritas. Seated on a nearby barstool: Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), a dull button-down traveling salesman from the briefcase brigade who is awaiting the outcome of an interview for a new job. They strike up a conversation. Despite having absolutely nothing in common, the chemistry between them is perfect, and they bond.
The next day Danny allows his new chum to take him to a bullfight where the title of the film is explained. (The literal translation of the word matador is “killer.”) In a moment of candor, Danny reveals he’s going through a rough patch financially. Julian promises his new pal he’ll help and offers Danny $50,000 to help him on his next “assignment.” Amused, bemused, horrified, but interested, Danny has the time of his life. What the hell, he’ll never see this reprobate again. Fade out. While Julian’s “work” takes him to Vienna, Las Vegas, Moscow, and Budapest, Danny is home making money in the new position that was made possible by the mysterious but well-timed death of his chief competitor. Little does he know how much he owes the pompous, self-indulgent, alcohol-soaked assassin he met in Mexico.
But six months later, Julian shows up haggard and desperate on Danny’s doorstep in Denver, at Christmas, in the middle of a snowstorm, needing a place to hide. “I look like a Bangkok hooker on a Sunday morning after the Navy left town,” he apologizes, heading for the guest room. There’s a contract on his life, but there is one way out if he’ll pull one last job, with Danny’s help. Julian envies Danny’s suburban family lifestyle, while Danny is appalled but fascinated by Julian’s reckless and dangerous work, and his wife, Bean (beautifully played by Hope Davis), actually finds herself turned on by all the B-movie thrills. So it’s off to a race track in Tucson, where Danny learns first-hand what it’s like to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I don’t mean as “The Governator.”
The humor is in the wild, unfiltered dialogue and tongue-in cheek direction, both by Richard Shepard, and the stylish “odd couple” role reversals of the two stars—what fun to watch Pierce Brosnan as he realizes all those rogues and crooks he’s known are not what you could call real friends, while Greg Kinnear gains devil-may-care pugnacity on the job and Hope Davis literally “moons” over the risky, glamorous, and profitable prospects of crime.
Stylistically, The Matador is like Julian—bold, quick, and effortlessly entertaining. And the film is a delectable revelation for Mr. Brosnan—skillfully funny, messily handsome, and deliciously sleazy. Self-parody? Maybe. (He’s one of the producers.) He’s explored his subtle and sensitive sides before, but thanks to the witty and twisted script he shows something new here. He also proves tuxedos can turn into straitjackets and bad boys have more fun. Blonde, steely-eyed Daniel Craig may grab the publicity as the new 007 for now and discover the downside later. But in The Matador, the old 007 is pulling off something sneaky and altogether exhilarating.
I was in Munich in September 1972, covering the filming of a movie called Visions of Eight, in which eight great directors selected a different view of the Olympics. The trip, as well as the event, was wrecked by the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists in ski masks. I will never forget standing helplessly with John Schlesinger, Mai Zetterling, and Kon Ichikawa, watching in horror from the darkened windows of the Olympic Village the innocent victims marched into the bus that took them to their assassination at the airport. I have had nightmares about it ever since.
Naturally, I looked forward to Steven Spielberg’s dramatization of these world-altering events with great anticipation. But while small aspects of the tragedy are interwoven in brief flashbacks, MUNICH is not about the deaths of these heroes. It’s a long, labored, and tedious search-and-destroy mission about the secret Israeli mission to retaliate, orchestrated by Golda Meir (as merciless and heartless a leader as she was a matriarch to her country).
You learn a few things: at 5 a.m. the dopey, good-natured Americans even helped the terrorists over the gated walls into the Olympic Village; the German army was prohibited from interfering because of international laws. But mostly you just watch while Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen, and where, I ask, is Tovah Feldshuh?) says “ambushed and slaughtered again” and orders a four-man Israeli combat team headed by Eric Bana (an Australian) and Daniel Craig (the Brit who will be the next James Bond) to exterminate the 11 killers. The movie follows them to Rome, Paris, Geneva, Athens, and New York with more technical information than we need about grenades, detonators, letter bombs, and exploding telephones. The movie has been denounced in Jerusalem by humanitarians for the bloody savagery of the Israeli assassins and for the sequence in a “safe house” in Athens where the Israelis are forced to share quarters with the P.L.O.—a section of the film in which the Palestinian point of view is given equal focus.
Tony (Angels in America) Kushner, writing his first screenplay, edges toward pretentiousness and knows nothing about the narrative arc of screenwriting. He’s aided enormously by co-writer Eric Roth, who scripted Forrest Gump and knows how movies work. You can tell which is which; their styles are easy to detect. Mr. Kushner is good at Hebrew philosophy and international politics. Mr. Roth is the one who moves the plot along. What’s alarming is that there is not a shred of emotional engagement here. While it explores the ways violence can become an obsession and the physical and psychological damage it did to the survivors of the Israeli team, it leaves you tired and empty and irritable. In the end, there’s no medal, no payoff, no reward. Golda Meir didn’t even say “Thank you.” The ad quotes one critic who calls Munich Spielberg’s masterpiece. It is nothing of the sort. With no heart, no ideology, and not much intellectual debate, Munich is a big disappointment and something of a bore.
THE PRODUCERS is a convincing example of how not to make a movie musical. Unlike Rob Marshall’s electrifying Chicago, which opened new windows to the ways Broadway shows can grow wings and fly memorably across the screen, choreographer Susan Stroman has done nothing to improve or enhance Mel Brooks’ ideas for The Producers. The small, silly details that made you laugh in spite of yourself are only garish and hammy on a screen the size of a mobile trailer.
Cutting the opening number, which defined Max Bialystock (Nathan Lane) as the larcenous producer searching for the worst musical in Broadway history for a tax write-off, leaves a gap at the top of the show that robs us of valuable information. That number set the tone for the whole plot and prepared us for what was yet to come. Without it, Nathan Lane just comes on screaming. He does what he always does, but on film he’s not only over the top, he’s over the rooftop. (He makes Zero Mostel seem subtle.) Matthew Broderick as Leopold Bloom, the nerdy accountant who cooks the books and becomes his partner in mayhem, fares better, and his singing voice has improved.
As their oversexed, treetop-tall Swedish secretary/sidekick Ulla, I cannot fathom the reason why Uma Thurman was recruited to replace Cady Huffman. Ms. Huffman won a Tony Award. Isn’t that good enough for Hollywood? Granted, Ms. Thurman has a movie name—but it’s not a big movie name, and it won’t get any bigger as a result of this mess. She’s a lox on ice.
As the goose-stepping author of Springtime for Hitler, a gay romp with Hitler and Eva Braun frolicking through Berchtesgarten, written “to clear Der Fuehrer’s name,” Will Ferrell in lederhosen is actually funny for a few minutes. Recreating their original roles, Gary Beach as the limp-wristed showbiz Hitler (“the German Merman, don’t you know”), hysterical in both pearls and swastikas, and Roger Bart as his “common-law assistant” Carmen Ghia are the best things in the picture.
But the numbers—with their bratwurst, pretzels, and tap-dancing storm troopers—are ruined by too many close-ups that cut off the dancers’ feet. The dirty old ladies tapping with their walkers down Fifth Avenue just seem clumsy, and it all leaves the same effect as a dinner of Chinese food: pleasant at the time but you can’t remember any of it the following day.