A satire masquerading as a thriller, The Tailor of Panama is a tawdry, depressing look at the state of affairs in the post-cold war spy game.

Andy Osnard, ably played against type by Pierce Brosnan, is a disgraced MI-6 agent who is sent to Panama in hopes that he will just stay out of everyone’s way (and bedrooms). Although viewed by diplomats as a career-ending backwater, Panama is in fact an extremely strategic artery. Osnard, the antithesis of Brosnan’s other cold-war mainstay, James Bond, is a lascivious, conniving, greedy, creep who finds the target for his machinations before his plane even touches down.

Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), a transplanted “saville-row” tailor to the power brokers of Panama, has built a career out of making his clients look good, even when their behavior isn’t so lovely. He listens well and tells powerful men what they want to hear: he is the consummate diplomat. His wife (Jamie Lee Curtis), the daughter of an American Canal engineer, works for and is fiercely loyal to the Canal.

Soon finding and exploiting Pendel’s Achilles heel, Osnard begins to abuse everything and everyone he comes into contact with. Nothing is safe from his corrupting influence.

Filling out the cast of characters are disillusioned freedom fighters, real people and the real star, the country of Panama, with its crown jewel, the Canal and the spectacular skyline of Panama City with its gleaming Cocaine Towers. Recently returned by the Americans to Panama, the Panama Canal is the thread that holds trade (illicit and otherwise) together in the Western Hemisphere. One of the most memorable scenes is a family outing swimming in the canal. The camera pulls back and the players are dwarfed by an array of tankers and merchant vessels ponderously plying the waters of the Canal. It doesn’t take much to give you a real sense of the importance of this little stretch of water.

Based on John LeCarre’s book of the same name (which I have not read, although I have read many of his other spy novels), The Tailor of Panama is the complete antithesis to the cold-war spy thriller for which he is most known. George Smiley this isn’t. Where LeCarre’s cold-war spies were bureaucratic everymen, The Tailor of Panama shows us another side of the spy game, where the safeguards are off, men’s basest desires are out of control and there are no more rules of the game. Who’s to say what is more realistic?

Although over the top, LeCarre and director John Boorman, have actually succeeded in exploding the myth of the glamorous spy…at least until the next James Bond explosion-fest hits the big screen. View The Tailor of Panama as a slightly-embarrassing morality tale and you may be able to justify wasting your time in watching.


Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age