Pierce Brosnan has sipped his last Martini and returns, in an outrageous self-parody, as the aging foul-mouthed boozy assassin Julian Noble, who has a particular fondness for teenage girls, bullfights and tacky clothes. During a job in Mexico City he meets Danny (Greg Kinnear), a straight-faced Denver suburban business-man, who's in town to make his deal of-a-life-time, in a hotel bar. Despite their completely different personalities and Julian's crude and insensible remarks, they become friends.
Largely carried by the performances of Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear, director Richard Shepard revealed that he didn't write the film with Pierce Brosnan in mind , but I can hardly imagine this without him. He proves to have a real talent for comedy and can be more than just James Bond or cold-war spies. The scene in which the two meet at a glossy hotel bar (stunning sets and beautifully photographed) really is a bravura piece of acting skills. The scene lasts almost fifteen minutes, and although it was probably carefully scripted, the two actors are largely improvising, but they succeed wonderfully! It almost feels like a new standard in screen acting. Think of Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel in MEAN STEETS improvising and add one of the most subtle underpinnings of many genre clichés and the actors' own typecasting (Brosnan's James Bond in particular), and you got one of the most delightful pairings in recent Hollywood.
Sadly, the story wears thin after a while. After an hour, the film just runs out of steam. Nevertheless, and I can't put my finger on it exactly, I did enjoy this very much. It just feels very fresh and original, with some imaginative use of sets and lighting, and some hints to Seijun Suzuki and Jean-Pierre Melville. The other characters aren't given much to do, but this film does offer something new, in that respect it almost effortlessly succeeds in blending all conventional genres into quite an entertaining spoof. Very amusing.
Camera Obscura --- 7/10

Average viewers looking for any sense of internal coherence in a film should probably give this one a pass. It generates the same feeling as staring at a curious array of individual images that seem to have some relationship one to another, but never coalesce into a totality.
While this isolative approach to creating a kind of cinematic montage may appeal to a few students or critics steeped in the inside language of contemporary filmmaking, it is flatly irritating and condescending to us commoners who just fell off the haywagon. An overt avoidance of accessibility may be the intentional hallmark of auteurs like Kar-wai Wong and Tarantino, but to me it comes across as Andy Warhol warmed over. The only redeeming characteristic I find is in the production values, and them there just ain't going to cut it all by themselfs.
This is one of those productions in which you watch and listen and wait anxiously and in vain for some clever development of an idea or thought to sustain all the remarkable and beautiful individual scenes. Sorry. The calligraphic credits unexpectedly begin to roll just as your interest begins to stir. I get the same big yawn and let-down reading what I guess are very knowledgeable and thorough comments about this film that never lead to anything truly comprehensible. Ideas and images without some external context are not my idea of fun.
Call me a philistine roaming the streets of Hong Kong looking for a bowl of chop suey.