Is there any actor working today who better conveys an air of middle-class, working-man decency than the way that Greg Kinnear does?

Even when he's playing bad, like he did in Paul Schrader's "Auto Focus," he brings a certain fresh-faced optimism to any project he tackles. He never takes the easy way out with a performance that turns his nice guy character into a closeted pervert or cuckold. His characters aren't saps or stooges, just Good Men. If Billy Wilder was still alive, he'd probably like to work with Kinnear — indeed, both Kinnear's looks and his roles call to mind the performances that Jack Lemmon, Wilder's favorite leading man, gave during the '60s and '70s.

Kinnear's new movie is "The Matador," and while his co-star Pierce Brosnan ("Die Another Day") is receiving most of the praise, Kinnear, in his typical fashion, quietly walks away with the movie, elevating what could have been a routine genre film to heights far greater than the material probably deserves.

Kinnear ("Stuck on You") plays Danny Wright, a salesmen living in Denver with his wife Carolyn (Hope Davis, "About Schmidt"). Their lives have been touched by tragedy — their young son died in a school bus crash two years ago.

Danny is sent to Mexico City to close a deal where one night, at a hotel bar, he meets Julian (Brosnan). They engage in boozy small talk for a while, but it ends badly when Danny tells Julian about his son's death and Julian responds with a dirty joke.

Julian has reason to be callous about death — he's a professional killer, although not a very good one, from what we can tell. He shakes, sweats and kvetches when he needs to make a hit.

His handlers (played by Phillip Baker Hall and, briefly, Dylan Baker) are worrying about his diminishing skills. Julian is worried too, as he confesses to Danny the next day.

"There are no retirement homes for assassins," Julian correctly points out.

After he apologizes profusely for insulting Danny's dead son's memory, Julian and Danny become quick friends, even attending a bullfight together, during which Julian shows Danny how he would go about assassinating a member of the crowd in one rather overlong sequence.

We accept Danny and Julian's unlikely friendship because of Brosnan and Kinnear's natural chemistry, even as writer/director Richard Shepherd struggles to keep the momentum moving during the scenes in Mexico City.

The film kicks into gear in the second act, which takes place almost entirely at the Wright house three years after Danny's trip to Mexico City. Much of what happens is built on surprise and misdirection, including a surprise visit by Julian to the Wright house. What he wants is clear, but why he wants it — and why he thinks Danny is an ideal co-conspirator — is a genuine surprise.

The scenes in the Wright house are a joy to watch. All three actors — Brosnan, Kinnear and Davis — infuse what could have been a deadly 20 minutes with melancholy humor.

These scenes throw us for a loop because they are such a radical departure from the featherweight material we had been getting throughout the first 45 minutes of the movie. There are some really touching moments here, especially from Davis, when she talks about how she and Danny met in high school.

The third act is a return to the buddy comedy we saw in the first. It's more or less what we expect from the material, but there are some nice laughs, especially the montage that shows the mustachioed Brosnan and Kinnear strutting through the airport as "Heat of the Moment" plays in the background.

Is this a great movie? No, probably not. It goes dull in stretches during the first act and the climax feels rushed. But it is an admirable movie, a perfectly realized piece of mid-budget filmmaking with exceptional performances from three talented leads.

Richard Shepherd keeps things moving when he has to, and knows when to slow things down and let his trio of actors talk. You think you know where the movie is going to end up, and you're right, although the path it takes to get there is quirky, playful and fun.

Just look at the last shot of the film, which, as one might suspect, features Brosnan strolling off into the snowy Denver landscape. Not a surprise. What is a surprise is that Shepherd chooses this moment of redemption to cue up a tune by, you guessed it, The Killers. Now that's funny.

Rating: 3 out of 5