DEATH OF A HIRED GUN

THE MATADOR

Directed by Richard Shepard. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Philip Baker Hall, Adam Scott, Dylan Baker 15A cert, gen release, 96 min

THE role of Julian Noble, the professional hit man - or "facilitator of fatalities", as he describes himself - at the centre of The Matador is played for laughs and with tongue admirably in cheek by Pierce Brosnan. A seedy, rootless cynic, Noble is suffering from burnout, drinking too much and losing jobs to younger assassins, who come cheaper.

On an assignment in Mexico City, Noble encounters Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), a struggling Denver businessman desperate for a break in a life plagued with bad luck. That chance meeting changes both their lives in writer-director Richard Shepard's spirited, briskly paced yarn. The significance of the title is explained when the two men watch a bullfighter in action and Noble expresses his professional philosophy that a good matador kills in one clean stroke.

An eclectic retro soundtrack - from The Jam's A Town Called Malice to Asia's Heat of the Moment - accompanies the action, while screen-filling captions note Noble's busy international itinerary: Manila, Budapest, Vienna. However, the movie was shot entirely in Mexico, including the Spielbergian suburbia where Danny lives with his caring, supportive wife, who relishes the rare opportunity to let loose with a torrent of swears when she has a few drinks. She is played in a touching and witty performance by the often underestimated Hope Davis, who also features in Proof and The Weather Man this week .

The movie, though, belongs to Brosnan, who turns in the most droll and breezy - and self-effacing - performance of his career. Wearing a moustache that would be more appropriate on a 1970s porn star, he shrugs off a compliment about his appearance with the line, "I look like a Bangkok hooker on a Sunday morning, after the navy's left town".

In another scene, as he strides nonchalantly in black Speedos and leather boots through a busy hotel lobby, with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, Brosnan puts his James Bond days firmly and finally behind him. Michael Dwyer