Rating of
4/4
Highly Developed
Franz Patrick - wrote on 11/17/08
“I’m as serious an erection problem.” I loved this film the first time I saw it because this is a classic ordinary guy meets a not-so-ordinary guy… with a little something extra. The timing and pace of this picture is impeccable: the first forty-five minutes focus on how Greg Kinnear, a businessman, and Pierce Brosnan, an assassin, meet and the last forty-five minutes focus on how their lives have changed after their meeting. By the end of the movie, I realized that from the first scene to the last, it kept getting better and better–I wanted to for it to be longer because I was really interested in getting to know the characters a little more. Once you think a character is one way, that assumption is blurred by another scene so you have to make room for reevaluation. Greg Kinnear is perfect as a regular Joe who doesn’t see how good he has it despite being often down on his luck. One can tell from his eyes that he craves something exciting, something new. Hope Davis is really funny, as usual, as a once tormented high school kid who can’t quite let go of what happened to her son. Her sensitive moments were heartbreaking and her character was established with a relatively short period of screen time. Last but not least, Pierce Brosnan is very believable as an assassin who eventually loses his touch while at the same time realizing that he doesn’t have any friends because of occupation. I think his age does give him edge without sacrificing his signature charisma. I also love the fact that his sexuality is always vague so his character is that much more interesting. There are a lot of inside jokes (accidental or otherwise) that made me laugh and one of them was the job in The Philippines. Those scenes were so funny to me because none of the supposed Filipinos on screen even looked remotely Filipino. I really couldn’t stop laughing and I thought it was great. Written and directed by Richard Shepard, this is one of my favorite dark comedies because it reminded me a lot of another favorite film of mine called “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.”
