Pick of the Week: The Tailor of Panama

Tagline: "In a place this treacherous, what a good spy needs is a spy of his own."

Length: 109 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexuality, language and some violence

Based on the novel by John Le Carre, The Tailor of Panama is a low-key spy yarn that features interesting characters, witty dialogue, good acting, and great location shooting around Panama City. Tailor is a sophisticated entertainment that engages our intellect more than our emotions. This is a film with no heroes, very little action, and no romance (although there are some stylized, discretely photographed sex scenes).

Tailor is directed by John Boorman (Hope and Glory, Excalibur, Deliverance), and it stars Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, and Jamie Lee Curtis. But even though this movie is a spy story starring Pierce Brosnan, Tailor bears scant resemblance to a James Bond film. Here Brosnan plays an unlikable character who’s not a hero at all; in fact, he’s an out-and-out scoundrel.

The title character in the film, whose name is Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), makes expensive suits for nearly all the men in Panama’s thirty ruling families. Harry, who claims he got his training on London’s Savile Row, knows how to flatter customers by telling them they look like Sean Connery or Robert De Niro. On the home front, Harry adores his attractive wife Louisa (Jamie Lee Curtis) and their two kids. But Louisa knows nothing about the years that Harry served in prison, which is where he actually learned his tailoring skills. She’s also unaware that he’s gotten himself into deep financial trouble by buying a farm that has a water supply problem.

One day a British spy named Andy Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) drops into Harry’s tailor shop to get some suits made, and we are treated to one of the movie’s many witty moments. As Harry measures Osnard, he asks, "Do we dress right or left? Most gentlemen favor left these days. Don’t think it’s political." "Never know where the bloody thing is," answers Osnard. "Bobs about like a windsock." We eventually come to realize that here Osnard is making a veiled reference to his political convictions.

As it becomes apparent to Harry that the newly arrived Osnard knows all about his shady background and current financial woes, the tailor demands an explanation, and the spy responds, "I’m MI.6’s man in Panama. It’s dark and lonely work, like oral sex." Osnard offers Harry money in exchange for information, and Harry at first refuses. Still the spy presses him, "You’ve got the debts. I’ve got the money. Where’s your patriotism?" Harry answers, "I had it out in prison without an anesthetic." But Osnard slips $5,000 into Harry’s pocket before leaving the shop, and thus begins the crisis that will dominate the tailor’s life for the rest of the movie.

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