Review – The Tailor of Panama

Author John LeCarre and director John Boorman try their hands at British-style black comedy with this Our Man in Havana-flavored offering. Geoffrey Rush stars as a tailor with politically prominent Panamanian clients, a mass of bad debts and a checkered past. Enter Pierce Brosnan as a smarmy MI-6 agent exiled to Panama and looking to use his charm to pull off a money-making scam and make a clean break out of the business. Rush complies with Brosnan’s demands for information about his clients by inventing a make-believe revolutionary movement that the spy then persuades his handlers and their American counterparts to fund. Most of the resulting humor and irony are pretty old hat, buoyed up only marginally by solid production values, decent acting and a passable script. Mildly amusing