The Tailor of Panama

Pierce Brosnan cheekily trashes his 007 image as a connivingly predatory English spy in Panama blackmailing a Brit tailor (Geoffrey Rush) for information about his highly placed clientele. And that nasty star turn is just one of the subversive pleasures of John Boorman’s The Tailor of Panama, a darkly comic political intrigue, based on the John le Carré novel. Set in a steamy locale, teeming with tangled motives, it’s a mordant variation on Graham Greene-ish themes. Yet Boorman doesn’t spare us the inevitably dire consequences. His sudden, startling jolts of torture and death keep things resonantly real.