The responsibility of playing James Bond comes with far more dangers and pitfalls than just having to talk your way out of having your penis burnt off with a laser or punching a dude with metal teeth. Ask anyone who’s donned the iconic tux and they’ll happily tell you that the greatest risk that comes with playing 007 is to find yourself linked so closely to the character that no one ever takes you seriously as anything else. Sean Connery managed it better than most with a Oscar win certainly helping and Daniel Craig was wise enough to hone his better stints with a licence to kill into more dramatically heavy outings – but surely the most interesting attempts of all the Bonds belonged to Pierce Brosnan, who, when he wasn’t fleeing CGI lava or warbling ABBA turns, spent a lot of his other roles playing weird variations of his most famous one.
Enter John Boorman, who had some previous experience helping Bonds rehabilitate into other roles by sticking Connery in a red nappy for Zardoz; but while he had nothing so extreme in store for Brosnan, a trip into the unfeasibly sneaky world of John le CarrƩ still gave the actor plenty of meat to get between his teeth.
Andy Osnard is a disgraced MI6 agent who has found himself banished to Panama after unwisely getting his end away with the wife of a foreign minister in Madrid, and while a life of stifling heat and apparent boredom awaits him, he vows to try and find a snifter of something that’ll get him back into the good Grace’s of his bosses – or at the very least, make him a bit of money.
Enter Harry Pendal, a happily married man who enjoys being the tailor to many of Panama’s elite despite the fact that his financial situation is shakier than a bobblehead of Shakin’ Stevens in an earthquake. After these two gentlemen get to talking, Osnard finds that this former toast of Saville Row knows quite a few things about what lurks beneath Panama’s surface in the wake of Noriega’s rule and soon thinks that he’s found his ticket to slime his way back to the top. Harry reveals that his washed up, alcoholic friend, Mickey, is actually an undercover revolutionary who holds great sway with Panama’s youth and his disfigured assistant, Marta, is a way in. Furthermore, he hints that the after measuring the President of Panama himself for a suit, he got wind of plans to sell the Panama canal to the Chinese and Osnard can’t believe his luck.
However, the truth is that Harry is something of a magnificent bullshitter, and unbeknownst to many – including his wife – he actually learnt to tailor in prison where he was doing time for being a con artist. On top of this, everything he’s been telling Osnard is a flat-out lie and he’s only been keeping up this subterfuge because the money he’s being paid will hopefully get him and his friends out of their financial worries. However, matters get even worse when you realise that Osnard is as slippery as they come and doesn’t actually care if his info is all so much guff.
With his life – not to mention the fate of Panama itself – at risk, can Harry untangle the lies before it’s too late. Failing that, can he at least stop the forever horny Osnard from boning his wife?
Adapting John le CarrĆ© is a notoriously tricky business where making things as dour and slow as you possibly can seems to be the best way in – I mean, it didn’t do Tomas Alfredson’s tale of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy any harm as it’s one of the most thrilling, snail’s paced thrillers I’ve ever seen. You see, CarrĆ© hasn’t really been known for slinging the odd car chase and random explosion into his works, preferring the type of more realistic drudgery of actual spy work than the kiss kiss, bang bangery of Flemming’s superspy, which seemingly is just fine with Bronson who positively revels at being the biggest bastard he can be.
Basically, its Brosnon’s performance that’s the lynchpin in the entire movie, and if I’m being brutally honest, its probably the only real reason to watch it as Boorman’s attempts to add a little razzle dazzle to CarrĆ©’s tale of spiralling lies doesn’t always sit comfortably with the author’s prose. For a start, Boorman has tried to give the talky, complex shenanigans of The Tailor Of Panama a rather light touch in an effort to keep the story moving. Similarly, Geoffrey Rush plays Harry as more of a loveable huckser, rather than a desperate liar frantically trying to manipulate the truth in order back himself out of a corner and as a result, his rather breathy, on the nose performance feels more suitable for the stage and thus ends up being about as grounded as Captain Barbosa from Pirates Of The Caribbean. Elsewhere, we get the equally capable – and very Irish – Brendon Gleeson curiously playing Spanish (I think), Harold Pinter popping up intermittently as a figment of Harry’s imagination that probably played far better in written form and Jaime Lee Curtis strangely doing her first nude scene since Trading Places without there really being any need to and while everyone does their jobs well (including a pre-Hogwarts Daniel Radcliffe), it often feels that Boorman is trying to jazz up a talky film when he should be doubling down on the tension that’s strangely absent.
However, in the midst of this well-meaning chaos strides Brosnon, who has seemingly signed on solely put the boot into his Bond persona as hard as he can and it’s impossible not to marvel as the actor embraces this massively anti-social prick and clings on as a drowning man would lock a death grip onto a flotation device. When he isn’t attempting to shag anything that moves, or blatantly lie to his superiors, he’s sidling up to Curtis with the predatory eyes of Pepe la Pew or keeping Harry utterly off guard by insisting on having meetings on the dance floors of gay bars, or having porn loudly play in the background, it’s great fun watch Brosnon subvert his hero image to such a reprehensible degree. In fact, – and no disrespect to everyone else involved – but he proves to be the only truly memorable aspect within this thoroughly decent, if somewhat basic, thriller.
Maybe I’m coming down extra hard on it because I’m such a fan of Boorman’s past works such as Point Blank and Deliverance, but while that odd, dream-like tone that managed to take such tight thrillers and take them to the next level, he seems to be approaching The Tailor Of Panama with the fanciful tone of one of Harry’s tall tales, chucking in the odd exagerated performance as he goes as spice. But while CarrĆ©’s twisty tale still manages to shine through, it’s Bronson on top bastardly form that makes this enterprise one worth trying on for size.
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