"The Tailor of Panama"

John Boorman tries on John le Carré's stylish tale of tropical corruption and finds it fits him like a glove.

By Charles Taylor

Mar 30, 2001 | Watching "The Tailor of Panama" feels a little like seeing some strange, exotic bird alight in front of you. John Boorman's film of the John le Carré novel is a sophisticated, subtle adult entertainment that is also a compliment to the audience -- it expresses faith that it will be at home with the tricky, shifting tone.

As strange as it is amid the surrounding fauna, this bird has a lineage. Le Carré's 1996 novel is itself a gloss on Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana"; Boorman's film recalls Carol Reed's marvelous 1960 film of the Graham book. They're both about innocents who cause chaos in a setting of tropical corruption. Graham's story was about a vacuum cleaner salesman (played in the film by Sir Alec Guinness) recruited by British intelligence. He's desperate for the extra money the part-time spying brings his way but he can find nothing to report on. So he makes up stories and feeds them to his intelligence handlers. The arrangement works well until his stories lead to real intrigue and real death.

Le Carré introduces another layer: a disgraced British intelligence operative named Osnard who is sent to Panama as his last chance to redeem himself. (Boorman and Andrew Davies adapted the author's screenplay for the film.) Looking for someone with access to the country's elite, Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) settles on Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), Panama's most exclusive tailor.

Up to his eyeballs in debt after spending an inheritance on a failing farm, Harry needs the money Osnard can funnel his way. And Osnard is happy to use the bits of insignificant information Harry gleans from his tony clients to ensure his own future. Spurred by self-interest and Harry's tidbits, Osnard concocts news of a "silent opposition," a group that plans to clean up the layers of corruption the United States left behind after snatching Manuel Noriega.

Osnard has leverage to get Harry's cooperation. The spy knows that Harry's tales of being descended from Savile Row tailors is a lie, and that his late revered partner, who has the WASP-y name Arthur Braithwaite, was actually Harry's late Jewish Uncle Benny (played amusingly, in flashback, by Harold Pinter). Benny taught Harry the trade, and Harry did five years in prison for burning down a shop so Benny could collect the insurance. It's something he has never told his wife, Louisa (Jamie Lee Curtis in a warm, believable performance), and since he worships her he's determined to keep the information from her.

"The Tailor of Panama" is a charade of two men using each other for their own ends, one of them (Harry) more likable than the other, but neither of them exactly innocent. The film is what Greene classified as an "entertainment," though the tone (dramatic as well as moral) is considerably trickier than what that word might imply. The potential for real danger isn't extricable from the tone of sophisticated irony, and since neither Harry's nor Osnard's motives are pure, "The Tailor of Panama" may throw audiences who want their reactions clean-cut. The fun of the picture is in the slyness the actors bring to the ever-shifting situation (there are good bits from Jon Polito as a swindling banker and Dylan Baker as a gung-ho U.S. general), and in the palpable pleasure Boorman takes in his own ability to juggle tones. Remember those funhouse sidewalks that moved up and down and back and forth as you attempted to walk them? Boorman directs the movie like a man who has learned to tap-dance on one of the contraptions without ever missing a step.

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