THE TAILOR OF PANAMA
Directed by John Boorman.
Written by Boorman, Andrew Davies, and John Le Carré,
on the novel by Le Carré.
Starring Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Gleeson.
USA-Ireland / 2001 / 35mm
"Can one man change the world?" This question, in one form or another, has been the central thesis of John Boorman's continuing oeuvre in such disparate films as Leo the Last, Zardoz, Excalibur, Beyond Rangoon, and The General. The answer has always been in the affirmative and it is the same in his new film, The Tailor of Panama. However, this is the darkest and angriest variation that he has ever presented on the theme. Surprisingly, it is also one of the funniest; a blackly humorous political comedy of errors, comparable to Dr. Strangelove. (Although I will tread lightly on the plot details, the best way to watch this film is to know as little as possible going in, so consider this a spoiler warning for the entire review.)
The film is based on a novel by espionage author John Le Carré. It begins as so many stories of its kind have in the past, with a veteran British MI:6 agent awaiting the details of his latest mission, though the spy in question, Andy Osnard, is hardly getting a glamorous assignment. A rogue with a penchant for bedding the wrong people instead of doing real work, he is being sent to Panama- "For you sins!" his boss darkly intones. In a perversely funny bit of star casting that actually works, Osnard is played by none other than Pierce Brosnan, clearly having a blast lampooning his James Bond persona.
Officially, Osnard has been sent to monitor the situation in Panama in the days after the U.S. returned the Canal to make sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands. His first task in the country is complete when he comes across Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), a tailor whose Saville Row attitude and diplomat wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) only barely mask his shady past; he will help Osnard figure out who is who.
Pendel is under no illusions about what he is doing (Osnard's spy technique is to walk into a room and essentially announce to everyone that he is a spy), but he also knows that if he doesn't supply information, he wont get paid and will lose everything. Desperate, he begins to concoct a tale of a "silent majority": a group of former anti-Noriega demonstrators who are supposedly planning a new revolution. He doesn't mention, for example, that the supposed leader (Brendan Gleeson) is a former revolutionary turned frightened drunk. But Harry, a born storyteller, spins out this fabrication using everything in eyesight for inspiration. We never know if Osnard actually believes this tale; he only questions whether it will play well for his bosses. With time, this faux-informatin is disclosed, and sparks an inevitable chain of events.
One of the most original filmmakers around, John Boorman has always been the most inventive when he has turned his off-center point-of-view to traditional films genres. In the same way that films such as Point Blank, Zardoz, and the criminally underrated Exorcist II subverted the conventions of the crime, sci-fi and horror, The Tailor of Panama wittily deconstructs the spy genre in such a way that it manages to work both as gripping thriller and wild satire.
The film also extends beyond fun and games. As with Boorman's Beyond Rangoon (1992) and The General (1998) - which have taken place during times on incursion of formerly peaceful lands - The Tailor of Panama uniformly details the director's outrage at U.S. and U.K. intrusion into grounds that they clearly do not belong in, with direct criticisms of the policies of Noriega, as well as former U.S. president George Bush.
Despite its serious side, the film is one of the most strangely delightful and entertaining to come along in a while. Brosnan and Rush are both very entertaining (this is probably Brosnan's best work to date) and the rest of the film is loaded with nifty supporting roles (especially Dylan Baker playing an Army commander as Oliver North by way of Jack D. Ripper). The mixture of humor, excitement, politics and peculiar performances is so potent that when the film directly quotes Casablanca near the end, it has actually earned that right.