The Tailor of Panama (Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush)
I kept getting the feeling while I was watching The Tailor of Panama it could have been better. On the one hand, it's frequently suspenseful, simply photographed and well acted, but on the other hand, it isn't overly involving. I was intrigued by the developments, but didn't really care what was going to happen to the characters. And yet there is a mysterious charm to the film, much like the Central American title city.
Current James Bond frontman Pierce Brosnan plays Andy Osnard, a shadowy MI6 agent banished to Panama for his reckless habits. He targets an anxious tailor named Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), with an equally shadowy past. The two don't necessarily trust each other, but they do enter an unlikely partnership, with Harry providing information to the covetous Andy. In exchange for the rumours, Harry will get financial help for his near-bankrupt tailoring business. Andy's blackmailing starts to turn very personal for the uncertain tailor, and here the movie introduces a number of subplots and threads, culminating in a cyclical but only partially satisfying conclusion.
Geoffrey Rush and Jamie Lee Curtis make an unlikely married couple and because they are so obviously miscast they aren't particularly effective in any scenes either. Leonor Varela is better as Marta, Harry's slightly disfigured assistant, Brendan Gleeson is adequately obnoxious as Mickie, and playwright Harold Pinter is cryptically convincing as a figure from someone's past. Pierce Brosnan seems to be having the most fun, sinking his teeth into the part of Andy with all of the scruples of a ravenous rat.
The characters are all hiding information and agendas from each other, but it's clear that the material would have benefitted from the directorial touch of a real pro like Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, or even L.A. Confidential's Curtis Hansen. John Boorman abandons camera tricks or moody settings in favor of turning Panama into a character study piece, which, to be fair, works to an extent because of the performances and the wry dialogue.
I watched The Tailor of Panama with three people, and two of them fell asleep halfway through. Their drifting off could explain the steady decline in dialogue-driven films recently -- there's not much demand for Merchant-Ivory versions of the spy world. If you don't object to a movie about the greed and corruption of politics, money, and relationships, but one that's devoid of any special effects or high-tech gadgetry, you might manage to stay awake.
