The Tailor Of Panama Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
In a place this treacherous, what a good spy needs is a spy of his own.
John LeCarre's spy thriller is brought to the big screen. A British spy (Pierce Brosnan) is banished to Panama after having an affair with an ambassador's mistress. Once there he makes connection with a local tailor (Geoffrey Rush) with a nefarious past and connections to all of the top political and gangster figures in Panama. The tailor also has a wife (Jamie Lee Curtis), who works for the Panamanian president and a huge debt. The mission is to learn what the President intends to do with the Panama Canal. But what the two do is concoct a tremendous fictional tale about former mercenaries who are ready to topple the current government and are willing to work with Britain and the US to do so.
| Pierce Brosnan | Andrew 'Andy' Osnard |
| Geoffrey Rush | Harold 'Harry' Pendel |
| Brendan Gleeson | Michelangelo 'Mickie' Abraxas |
| Harold Pinter | Uncle Benny |
| Daniel Radcliffe | Mark Pendel |
| David Hayman | Luxmore |
| Mark Margolis | Rafi Domingo |
| Martin Ferrero | Teddy, the Reporter |
| John Fortune | Maltby |
| Martin Savage | Stormont |
| Edgardo Molino | Juan-David |
| Jon Polito | Ramón Rudd, the Banker |
| Jonathan Hyde | Cavendish |
| Dylan Baker | General Dusenbaker |
| Paul Birchard | Joe |
6.00 out of 10 (10695 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Our Man in Havana in Panama
posted on 15 Aug 2009Given that John Le Carre is credited as Executive Producer and co-writer, with Andrew Davies and director John Boorman, of this adaptation of his novel then fidelity is assured. But even he has to admit the debt he owes to Graham Greene and "Our Man in Havana" of which this can be seen as a prescient remake.Pierce Brosnan is Andy Osnard, the disgraced MI6 agent banished to Panama for his sins. In order to justify his existence he needs information and settles on Harry Pendel, tailor and former jailbird down on his luck. But Harry is even more desperate than Andy and like Wormold before him the information he supplies becomes ever more fanciful and dangerous. But where the jokes in Greene's 'Havana' soured into tragedy, here the tragedy is closer to (very) black comedy and very funny it is, too. With marvellous performances from Geoffrey Rush as Harry and Brosnan in a career-best turn and flawless direction from John Boorman, this is a crisp, pertinent and hugely enjoyable entertainment.
Excellent anti-spy film
posted on 15 Aug 2009If you're a fan of John LeCarre spy novels, you'll love this film. If you're a fan of James Bond, you'll also love this film, because it's a perfect anti-spy caper starring none other than Pierce Brosnan--the man born to play Bond. Brosnan is absolutely convincing as a womanizing, exploitative opportunist, who uses his postion as a MI-6 operative to pull a scam on both U.S. and British intelligence. Where Bond is a likeable rake, this fellow is a despicable, sex-addicted, SOB. Kudos to Brosnan for pulling this off. And double kudos to Rush who should get an Oscar nomination.
as the plot thickens
posted on 16 Jul 2009I saw this at a small theater after reading about it. It wasn't getting any press in this area (and not much nationally I believe). It was a pleasant surprise. Rush is great as always as the Tailor who spins tall tales. Although Brosnan's character is being compared to Bond, I don't think the resemblance is that close. Brosnan is a spy, yes, but has been kicked to the curb for having an affair with royalty in Spain if I remember correctly. He ends up in Panama, and befriends the tailor to the rich in Rush. His goal is to get out this hell-hole, and he needs information about the corruption in the gov't. Rush doesn't know anything, but spins a good tale that Brosnan believes.Good writing, good directing. Everything isn't put in plain view for the audience to know, some work has to be done by the audience to deduce what is happening and why. I rate 8.
best of the year
posted on 04 Jul 2009saw this last night, and what a treat. i felt a little sad liking it so much. what appealed was the political honesty: the satirisation of corrupt politics, diplomatic farce, emotive militarism (!). left-wing politics really. it was simply refreshing to see them in a reasonably mainstream hollywood movie (no wonder so many of the people commenting disliked it - the wrong audience, misadvertised in the spirit of the rampant commercialism it satirizes. it'll find a following eventually). but as i said, i felt a little sad, because there were days when radical politics lit up the canvas in films from zabriski point to the battle of algiers (albeit never in america).the film has many strings; double entendres that are actually funny ('it's tight, from lack of use'), that wonderful sanctimonious speech ('the american flag is missing a star'), conceptual play (tale-or of panama, casablanca parody), harold pinter (who is a very nice man). brosnan is a revelation. there's a real sense of the bored gentleman about town. and from the fizzpop of the script, one suspects harold pinter may have had a quick look through the script. although as has been said, le carre is excellent at dialogue. the material is certainly strong, and for those who complain about a lack of pyrotechnics, it's better than simply substituting fresh ethnicities for russian communists. (air force one, the siege, and on, and on...)this is an intelligent movie, unafraid to say a few truths - even if not as many as the original novel. i read an interview with boorman recently where he said he hoped to just make one more film, if he could get the money. he's obviously ruffled a few feathers with this one. which is again, back to the sadness - imagine what he could have, should have (pop goes the budget) said. it would have been less polite than this delicious drama, which i hope everyone involved in is proud of.'it's a dark, dirty job... but someone has to do it...'
Inept spy makes a mess of his mission.
posted on 04 Jul 2009The characters in the movie all seemed to have a great understanding for each other, but none were very well developed or explained to the audience. Many scenes simply dragged by while the more exciting ones probably took up a whole 10 minutes in the entire film because they were rushed through. Overall, the movie just seemed to be lacking the ability to amuse its audience with novice writers penning the script. Watching it seems to be a waste of a few perfectly good hours.
Warning: Not Your Usual Brosnan Movie!
posted on 02 Jul 2009So, we rented this movie because it had Brosnan in it, and it dealt with spying and treachery. Unfortunately, we could not get through the end of the movie. This movie was terrible!The plot was suffocated by the over emphasized role for Brosnan. His character was surrounded by extremely graphic scenes that seemed to be inappropriate given the basic plot of the movie. You expect him to have a passionate affair with co-worker. After all, he is a spy. But, I did not expect that graphic scenes of homosexuality and adultery. That was a bit much, and seemed gratuitous at best.The content of the film made it difficult for me to get into the plot. So, we hit the eject button before the movie ended. It is pretty painful to watch, and was generally disturbing and uninteresting.2/10 at best.
Witty and clever adaptation of le Carre's novel
posted on 15 May 2009The Tailor of Panama is an entertaining, witty, clever, and faithful adaptation of John le Carre's novel. Although Andy Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) has more visibility in the film than the book, Brosnan makes the slimy and arrogant character highly watchable. One almost roots for him in the end. Geoffrey Rush is both amusing and touching, and his subtle performance reminds us of what a great actor he is.Le Carre himself served as co-writer and executive producer, but alas, unlike in The Little Drummer Girl, does not make a cameo.
like one of tongue-in-cheek 60s adventure movies
posted on 07 May 2009This is a movie most of us will have already seen. Foreign country, mysterious characters, Europeans living among the natives, a little bit of historical fact thrown in, smug humour, the military and beautiful women. There was a lot of these movies made 35 years ago (when on location filming was taking off). Brosnan is the arrogant agent, Rush (in a Michael Caine type role) is the tailor. It gets tiresome after the characters are introduced and the plot is set up. Baker is funny as the general. Not one of Boorman's better titles.
I feel misled, but in a good way
posted on 05 May 2009When I read the back of the box about this movie, I was pretty unimpressed. The way it was described, it was like Pierce Brosnan was some suave, debonair British secret agent.I thought "This sounds familiar", and then the all to obvious conclusion revealed itself. That is a description of a BOND MOVIE. I didn't want to watch a cheap Bond knock-off, but was forced to watch against my protests.I am glad I was shot down, as I was pleasantly surprised to find Brosnan was neither suave nor debonair. His lewd, inappropriate, and tasteless comments made the movie for me.It was a case of being wrong, but glad you were. The story, well, I remember very little of that. I don't think it was that important. Something about Geoffrey Rush knowing some politicians secrets because he is their tailor, or some such.The Important thing is the rude comments of Brosnan. Watch it for that.
2 hours of my life I'll never get back
posted on 09 Apr 2009This is my first user comment ever, but this movie was so painful for me I felt I had to do what I could to warn others. How on earth the producers lured Geoffrey Rush, so amazing of late in "Quills", and the intelligent and charming Jamie Lee Curtis into this slow, horribly written sleaze-fest is beyond me. Pierce Brosnan is so smarmy, every bit the "misogynistic dinosaur" Judi Dench so aptly dubbed him in his first Bond movie. I was completely repelled by everything about this movie.
A tongue in cheek spy film from the pen of John Le Carre
posted on 03 Apr 2009This is a fun film much more like the Alec Guinness spoof "Our Man in Havana," than it is similar to James Bond spy film fantasies. Jeffrey Rush and Jamie Curtis, as husband and wife, lead an excellent cast. Pierre Brosnan doesn't seem right for this role as he did not seem right as Thomas Crown in the film of that name. The film largely follows the book with some modification in the last part. I would recommend it, but once seen you would probably not be interested in seeing it again.
Boorman in Greeneland
posted on 14 Mar 2009Andy Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) is a British agent who's been sentdown, literally--to Panama, a demotion to punish his rakehellways. Andy--a hardboiled charmer and a cold, narcissisticcreep--figures out a road to a comeback: Harry Pendel (GeoffreyRush), a tailor who has covered up his lowborn past withbusiness cards that read "Harry Pendel--Savile Row andPanama." Andy needs information about the Panamanian
president's intentions to sell or keep the Panama Canal, and Harrybadly needs Andy's money--and so Harry becomes a sort ofScheherezade of Panama politics. He tells Andy curlicuedlies--and Andy sells them to the boys back home. In short order, ofcourse, this leads to the brink of a very literal apocalypse.The dominant feeling of John LeCarre's fiction--the melancholy ofordinary human characters caught in the cogs of wheels too largefor their imagining--was better grasped by Fred Schepisi in hisunderrated RUSSIA HOUSE. The director, John Boorman, couldn'tput a foot wrong in his last movie, the Irish gangster docudramaTHE GENERAL; THE TAILOR OF PANAMA doesn't approach thatmovie's virtuosic sureness. There is staging that clanks andclonks; Philippe Rousselot's photography is uncharacteristicallygrubby; and there are moments when Rush's and Brosnan'sperformances seem too stylized for the movie's own good. But thisis definitely a they-don't-make-'em-like-they-used-to movie.Boorman manages to hit the fairy-tale-ish quality of Harry'simmolation; as in EXCALIBUR and WHERE THE HEART IS,
Boorman is tops at mating the mythic and the journalistic andoffhand.Rush is turning into the John Barrymore of our age. I don't meanthat in an altogether negative sense. A good Rush performance,like this one, walks the line of overcalculation and stagycartooning, but somehow steps behind that line--or, when hedoesn't, gets away with it by dint of Rush's sheer lovableness. Hemakes you feel protective toward the Tailor's attempts to hold hischin up high in an upper-crust way. (The most cruelly accurate linein the movie: Rush tells a Panamanian middle-managementmeatball that his suit is "Mr. Connery's choice. You resemblehim--in the build, too. Golfer's shoulders!") Brosnan, not having a lot of technical skill at his disposal, getsaway with lampooning his own image by looking at everyone andeverything with a dead-eyed, half-leering-half-nauseated stare.Boorman adroitly cast Brosnan at exactly the point where hispreservedly-boyish male-model looks are just beginning to rot.And while THE GENERAL's Brendan Gleeson hams it up
fecklessly, there is a surprisingly sweet and modulatedperformance from Jamie Lee Curtis as Rush's high-powered wife.In recent years, in some of the worst movies ever made (such asVIRUS and HALLOWEEN H20), Curtis has made a point of takingdreck seriously and committing herself to giving a realperformance. It paid off: she finally got to do it in a real movie!
Great Movie
posted on 20 Feb 2009I now believe that most of the people posting comments here must only like movies that are spoon fed to them. If they have to think and listen to dialogue they get bored and think the film is trite. 'Tailor' reminded me of movies that use to have some thick substance that you sunk your teeth and chewed on. Alas most of these previous idiots say inane stuff like, "The part was to dark for Pierce" or "the direction was uneven" or "I couldn't follow the plot." A part is never to dark for a main stream actor, unless the viewer of the movie has the actor typecast. If that's the problem then the viewer needs to pay more attention to what's on the screen and not their own wishes for who the actor should be portraying. If you thought this flm was boring, then it's just another example of how many in the audience need to have ACTION, CAR CHASES AND EXPLOSIONS to keep their ADD personality absorbed. An 8 for this film. If you like movies that are more then just crappy trival exercises, you won't be disappointed.
Great story in a unique perfect setting.
posted on 16 Feb 2009There's something about villans in films that makes us all want to secretly want them to win. Sometimes we even like them no matter how revolting and despicable they are. In Tailor of Panama Pierce Brosnand, as Andy Osnard fills this role to a 'T' in what's one of the most memorable new characters I have seen on film in a long time.We get no mistake about who Osnard is as soon as the film starts. We are in MI-6 headquarters in London, and Osnard is being reviewed by his superior.
His superior returns back saying, the best he could do for him was to assign him to Panama, also commenting 'that scandal in the papers with the Spanish foreign minister's wife was bad enough, it's not like they don't know about the other ones! They want your head Osnard consider yourself lucky!'. To which only Osnard replies, 'It was his mistress not his wife'. However, while Osnard is sent down, he is instructed to find out any information that might be important to 'England' regarding the security of the canal, perhaps doing everyone a favour by getting as far away from England as possible.Osnard being the scoundrel he is, fits in perfectly with the ilk crowding around in Panama, 'drug dealers', 'cons on the run', 'people who just want to dissapear'. He decides to pick a tailor played by Geoffry Rush as an informant since many of his clients are the upper-crust of the Panama gossip source. But it soon becomes clear that in Panama, with all the scum lying around things can get really messy where the name of the game is 'blackmail' LOTS AND LOTS OF BLACKMAIL.I went and saw this movie with my dad since he was born in Panama, and has read EVERY single John Le Carre spy novel there is. Asking him if the story was true to the book he mentioned the ending was changed, and the witty dialogue is more of an added plus for the audience to be entertained. But he did like the movie very much, even though the ending is more of a Hollywood happy ending instead of the real unfortunate ending as mentioned by the novel.One thing we did agree on was the setting for this great story. Panama looks amazing and it was such a great setting. Also Brosnan is so good as Osnard who is such a scoundrel, and Rush as the tailor who somehow just wants to wash his hands of all the dirt but can't escape it. And what can be said of Jamie Lee Curtis! She still looks GREAT at her age and is really good in this film as well. A perfectly cast film. The movie is never boring, and I never found it 'difficult' to follow. It is a refreshing change in that it really follows along how Osnard and the tailor have to need each other to survive in this crazy land.Also the film has some memorable dialogue.'Good deeds, don't go unpunished in Panama' - former Panama resistance leader'Panama City is like Casablanca but without the heroes' - Geoffry Rush the tailor'It's time to add another star to our flag.' - American generalI was kept intrigued by how Osnard and the tailor were going about their stories, 'does he believe him', 'does he care', 'is he after his wife', 'does she care', 'is he having affair'.. there's LOTS of spy speculation
that will keep you guessing end on end. You really feel for these 2 guys.The perfect spy character film, much enjoyed!Rating 8 out of 10.
Extreme disappointment
posted on 04 Feb 2009Friends had invited us to see the latest Bond film, but we decided to stay in and rent this instead. Big mistake.There's some promise but the movie is too uneven. Brosnan isn't quite convincing in most of his scenes as an amoral spy, Jamie Lee Curtis isn't quite convincing as a bureaucrat, and some of other characters were confusing. I was put off by the discrepancy between the realistic and human portrayal of the tailor, played by Rush, as a caring man on the fringes of intrigue, and the almost cartoonish behavior of most of the other characters.By the time the story begins to involve more important people, it gets more and more ludicrous until somewhere about the one-hour mark we all just gave up on trying to understand it.It's too bad, because beyond the near-parody of a spy thriller, there are some interesting hints at more real-world themes -- the brutality of the Noriega dictatorship, meddling by the US (in both propping him up and overthrowing him), cynicism and hopelessness of the people in those countries. But not in this movie.If I had seen it in a theater, I would have been even more irritated at the waste of my time. The only improvement might have been a better view of the scenes of the streets and skyline of Panama City and the countryside, as well as the canal itself.Steven
boring, predictable, not funny, unwitty, offensive
posted on 02 Feb 2009I am unsure why this film is garnering good reviews but it is at least good to see that the user ratings here have put it in the sixes. It was just another film where you felt ripped off after seeing it: if you must see it wait for the video. You won't miss a thing on tape and hopefully you will gain a softening of the glaring bad editing and directing.
Hey! Pierce Brosnan can act !!
posted on 31 Jan 2009This movie starts out well and performances by Rush and Brosnan carries this movie for the first hour or so. Then it falls into a kind of `A Fish Called Wanda' plot without the laughs. Jamie Lee Curtis acts through her breasts in everything I've ever seen her in. This is a rental movie and only if everything else is out.
Poor!!!
posted on 23 Jan 2009I had high hopes, but ultimately let-down by the narrative. I was actually quite bored with the whole thing until the last 30 minutes or so. There's no strength in the film, there's no sense of direction and no depth of the political intrigue.I don't understand the glowing reviews by some critics, there's not enough meat in the story, the film lacks strong a 3 act structure. The film feels lazy.Pierce Brosnan is basically a dirty James Bond, he's miscast here. I didn't believe his character. Jamie Lee Curtis was terrible, her character had no dimension! Only Geoffrey Rush had a decent character to play, but kinda over did it with the acting.The direction is rather lacklustre, although the panavision wide-screen frame is used very well. Do not bother watching in the disgraceful pan and scan edition, you'll miss out on 43% of the picture.A poor film which could've been fantastic.
read the book
posted on 21 Jan 20093/10 for Geoffrey Rush and (always beautiful) Jamie Lee Curtis. Kudo's for filming in Panama.However, since this is a very, very sophisticated spy "thriller" and I did not read the novel - I found most of it rather slow and boring. I hate it when the director demands that you think and then gives you nothing. Waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I had no sympathy for any of the characters even though watching Rush work is worth it - even though he had little to work with.Pierce Brosnan was poorly directed and is not a great actor on his own. He is unbelievable as the english spy looking for his retirement allotment.Poor direction totally.
our spy in Cuba
posted on 19 Aug 2009I was disappointed with this film. It is exactly the plot of the Graham Green's book. John le Carré was better writer. The characters made the best in order to save the movie! I saw this film two times because I used to doubt of myself. The result was the same. I got bored. It is my opinion, no more!