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Tailor of Panama, The'Smiley's People' and 'Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy' made for landmark TV. So an adaptation of John Le Carré's 1996 tale of Harry Pendel (here played by Geoffrey Rush), a man who patches the Panamanian president's shirts but has a hidden past, was inevitable.
Less predictable was that it would end up in the hands of director John Boorman, whose career has veered wildly from eco-awareness movies like The Emerald Forest to the insanely ambitious sci-fi epic Zardoz. Fortunately, The Tailor Of Panama finds him in his Point Blank and Deliverance mode, rather than his excruciating Exorcist II mode.
There are all manner of delights here: a fine turn from Harold Pinter, an excellent Shaun Davey score and a string of superb sets (the quality of which are amazing considering the time Boorman claims to have spent fishing his crew out of the local brothels).
That the film truly flies is down to its two leads, both making excellent work of the droll script and the intriguingly mischievous direction (Boorman by no means comes at the spy game from a po-faced angle). Geoffrey Rush is, of course, one of the finest actors of his generation. And any worries about Pierce Brosnan's range ought to evaporate after his charismatic turn as the dubious Eton-educated spy Andrew Osnard. Could it be that for the first time since Sean Connery, 007 is being played by someone who's a star and a real actor? Either way, the Salzman/Broccoli axis shouldn't go shopping for a new Bond just yet.
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