CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS

The Matador is the best Christmas movie you've never seen

Emily Schultz has a rule. Just because a brutal or off-kilter film has a Christmas tree in it doesn’t make it an alternative holiday classic. Both Paul Schrader’s Hardcore and Aldo Lado’s Last Stop on the Night Train open on Christmas scenes but neither dwell on seasonal themes that much. To truly be our pick for a Cinema Dirtbag Christmas, a film has to embody the spirit of the holiday in its own perverse way.

My suggestion was Richard Shepard’s The Matador, a film unfairly dumped into cinemas in January, 2005. Pierce Brosnan is outstanding as a degenerate hitman who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Greg Kinnear, a wholesome businessman taking one last shot at success. While Emily and I were lucky enough to see The Matador in theater at the time, most audiences were probably sick of anything to do with hitmen after the 1990s. That’s a shame as Shepard’s script is far more than the Tupperware Tarantino the marketing suggested it was. It is in fact a great film that takes death seriously and is all the funnier for it. With each viewing the craft and wit is more apparent and the relationship between two men facing down their mid-life career crises more nuanced.

Before we would get to The Matador we made a brief stop on Tubi so I could show Emily the ending of 1980s bizarro slasher Christmas Evil and we could each reminisce on our darker holiday memories.

BRIAN J DAVIS: I'm going to show you the ending of Christmas Evil. FYI: Everyone who sees the ending of this film believes in the magic of the holiday a little more.

EMILY SCHULTZ: You're putting on the ending of a film that I've never seen?

BJD: It doesn’t matter. First, there’s a hundred horror movies set on Christmas Eve now. It’s not special anymore, right? And it’s not even that good of a slasher movie. But I want to bring it up here as a classic because probably no one has my story, which is my grandmother put this on and had me watch it!

ES: That is unique.

BJD: My grandmother was unique. She was probably bipolar, definitely a drug addict, and from the perspective of a nine-year-old, a total blast to be around. Was she my parents’ first choice of childcare? No. But you know how the 1980s were.

ES: The ’80s were like, Will anyone will watch my kid? Anyone? I’ll give you two dollars. Try not to kill them.

BJD: She knew how to push the limits. She was obsessed with her police scanner. She would gather us around to listen. “Come on, kids. Sounds like there’s a knife fight at Sam’s Hotel.”

ES: Oh my!

BJD: But even before we showed up, she would have gone to the video store and come back with a stack of the most hardcore horror, exploitation, or weirdo movies.

ES: This is where you get it from!

BJD: This is a triple feature I’ll never forget. Rock and Roll High School, the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers and, sure, why not: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My grandmother had Vinegar Syndrome taste. She’s why I discovered the Ramones and punk!

ES: Whereas my grandparents thought they were being really risqué that time we all watched A Fish Called Wanda!

BJD: So one December, we were dropped off there and she said, “I rented Christmas Evil. You guys are going to love this one!” Now, it’s not the best slasher movie. It’s actually quite pedestrian. Basically Psycho plus Halloween set at Christmas. A kid is told by his brother Santa isn’t real, wakes up later, then sees Santa getting it on with his mother. He then becomes obsessed with Christmas, and snaps. Now here’s the thing, and I think this is probably why my grandmother liked it. It has the single most bonkers movie ending ever.

[We watch the ending, which we won’t spoil but you can watch the film on Tubi or just the ending on Youtube]

ES: If you told me before what the ending was I would not believe it was from a real movie.

BJD: I want to point out that my grandmother literally liked these movies. She wasn’t just picking films she thought would entertain three boys.

ES: She was just bringing you along for the ride?

BJD: Bringing us along for the “slay” ride! So that was the Davis family Christmas movie. What was yours?

ES: Um… It's a Wonderful Life. Every year.

BJD: It's okay to have had a normal childhood. Celebrate who you are.

ES: Actually, Christmas Evil reminded me of something. So my brother, his birthday is the day before Christmas. That’s a very difficult birthday. Even getting people to come over. But one year he tried to have a birthday party, and my father dressed as Santa. Nobody knew it was my father. Except I went to sit on my father's lap and I shouted “I’d like a puppy, Daddy!” Because I could see the cuff of his polyester shirt hanging out from underneath the Santa suit.

BJD: You're just like the brother in Christmas Evil!

ES: I’m that kid that ruined it for everybody.

BJD: So for the record, did your brother become a Santa Claus obsessed serial killer?

ES: Not that I know of.

THE MATADOR (2005)

BJD: You are of the opinion this is not a Christmas movie.

ES: I think having a tree in the corner for, like, one scene does not a Christmas movie make.

BJD: We’ll discuss it and we’ll see where we land. We actually saw this at the theater in January and you never forget a January film on the East Coast. No one in the theater so they are not turning the heat on.

ES: Having to watch while in a parka after you’ve made some effort to get there.

BJD: But we loved this film! And I think the audiences at the time just didn’t want to sit through another hitman movie.

ES: How many were there really?

BJD: The entire 1990s? Love and a .45, Grosse Pointe Blank, Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead. This movie is set up to look like those, but here’s the difference… there’s not an ironic note in The Matador. Everything is sincere.

ES: I was thinking we were also pretty young for the theme at the time.

BJD: A hitman and a businessman meet at a bar in Mexico and realize that they are both at their mid-career slumps. This definitely hits even harder now.

ES: I remember at the time being amazed at where this film went and Pierce Brosnan— what a beautiful mess in this film.

BJD: Didn’t you have a Pierce Brosnan thing as a kid?

ES: I was a Remington Steele fan, but it was a Stephanie Zimbalist thing, thank you. There’s still this cognitive dissonance for me. Brosnan in this movie is such a complicated piece of shit. This opening scene does so much. The radio that starts talking to him, he wakes up next to a pickup, then he decides to paint his toe nails. It’s very novelistic.

BJD: And they open with suburban nice guy Greg Kinnear having sex with his wife on his dining room table.

ES: It kind of says, no we’re not the crime film you’re expecting. I remember wondering at the time what they were doing with Brosnan’s character’s bisexuality, or rather his omnisexuality.

BJD: They had to fight for it in the edit so it’s there and sometimes not. It gives a layer to the men’s relationship.

ES: One of the things that the film really wanted to achieve quickly is to not like Brosnan’s character Julian but…

BJD: To empathize with him, and that’s the start of this film’s Christmas message.

ES: Now stop talking.

BJD: Pretty soon in this film we realize that it just zeroes in on the relationship between these two men and it gives their scenes a stage play amount of time. There are four scenes that take up half a movie. But I want to circle back to not liking Julian the killer. The film really deftly shows how to have a morality even within the immorality of a killer. You don’t immediately understand his ethics, but they are there.

ES: Right. His name is Julian Noble. They are two men who realize that they won’t do anything for money.

BJD: They both have limits.

ES: Let’s not spoil it. The twist is really enjoyable. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about. What is it that attracts the hitman to this straitlaced businessman?

BJD: I think he realizes Kinnear’s character has a part of him that will entertain the dark side. As we learn at the end of this scene, he and his wife have survived a tragedy. And tragedy marks you in the middle class. It makes you an outsider.

ES: So Julian sees this without knowing?

BJD: Truffaut had this notion about Hitchcock, that his films were all about the random moments when good and evil are put in the same room. And now, The Scene. Where Brosnan walks through a luxury hotel in his underwear and boots, set to “Garbageman” by The Cramps.

ES: That's how I feel walking to the pool at every hotel I’ve ever stayed at.

BJD: Now the bullfight scene. It’s so great. It’s 10 minutes long and you do notice when they take 10 minutes with a scene in a film.

ES: Okay, I relate so much to this scene where Julian reveals what he does for a living. Having had a career as a writer now I’ve gotten tired of explaining it to normal people. I feel like I have a double life that people have to drag out of me.

BJD: Like, Come on, tell me what you really do?

ES: Exactly. I’ve lived it. Now the bad news about Kinnear’s business deal. Answering machine messages. I miss how easy they were for conveying information!

BJD: Okay, so we’ve got to Christmas this shit up, though, Schultz. The first half of the movie is almost entirely in Mexico City. Then it jumps to Christmas in Colorado six months later, and we don’t know what happened in Mexico.

ES: This is the biggest connection with 1990s film. The fractured timeline. But this one is classy. It’s exactly in the middle of the film. This sex scene on the washing machine is so bad.

BJD: But you have to love Kinnear’s new mustache, he’s cloning with Julian.

ES: The mustache is so amazing.

BJD: I realized what I love about this film. Men are generally never interesting as subjects as they are in this movie. They’re given actual interior life here.

ES: What are men’s interior lives usually though?

BJD: I don’t know—energy drinks and podcasts? Can I now talk about what I think the Christmas message is?

ES: Go for it.

BJD: So Julian shows up at Christmas at Greg Kinnear’s house because he’s in trouble and needs help with a hit. This is such a test of friendship and they both realize that their friendship completes them as people.

ES: What I like is the friendship now has to negotiate Kinnear’s wife and in a way, she joins the relationship as well. And Greg Kinnear is the hinge!

BJD: Hope Davis is fantastic in this. In a just universe it would have been a supporting actress award nomination.

ES: We think she’s one kind of person but we see how she lets herself loose.

BJD: So, do you buy that this is a Christmas movie?

ES: They’re in a room with a Christmas tree.

BJD: But what does Christmas do but bring people together? And the pecan pie!

ES: I wondered why they just happen to have that pecan pie, just sitting around. And I guess there is a bowl of oranges. And there’s dancing—though it’s not Christmas music.

BJD: Now Pierce Brosnan is talking about his mental breakdown and how he woke up in a pile of donkey shit—that’s a deep-cut Christmas reference.

ES: Okay, it’s Christmas Eve and he has no place to stay. I guess those are details I may have missed. And I really like how they draw out the “what happened between these men in Mexico City” reveal. Was it a hookup? Did Brosnan kill someone for Kinnear?

BJD: Let’s jump to the ending, without spoiling anything. Kinnear literally uses corporate training techniques to help Julian with his work problem. Brosnan stops Kinnear from making a mistake. This movie’s emotions are so sincere.

ES: At the same time as being violent and filthy.

BJD: And that’s what I want Christmas to always be: violent, filthy, and sincere. So, Schultz, is it a Christmas movie?

ES: There’s a gift, there’s a wreath, there’s generosity of spirit, and there’s underground sex clubs. It is a Christmas movie.