The Tailor of Panama

Bomb Rating: 

Bad movie ideas, like bad soup, rarely become more palatable when left out overnight.

Two problems immediately spring to mind. One: Not a person in the world can look at Pierce Brosnan and not think James Bond. Two: I've seen "Taffin." This all makes casting Brosnan as a British spy other than James Bond extremely problematic, as it's practically impossible to separate the two and Brosnan's acting, to use the film school term, liplocks donkey dong.

The filmmaker's way around this is to make Andy Osnard (Brosnan) an ass. He's an ass because some other people in the film say he's an ass and because he tries to bed every woman in sight. That's still pretty much James Bond, so Osnard uses a lot of bad words Brosnan couldn't possibly convey the difference any other way. That would be like asking a fish to fly.

I'm not exactly clear on why Osnard believes a word said by tailor Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), since Osnard walks into Pendel's little tailor shop in Panama and confronts him about his lies to the community and to his wife, Louisa (Jamie Lee Curtis). Pendel has a criminal history and learned tailoring in prison, but he paints himself as a respectable man. Osnard knows Pendel is both a liar and deeply in debt -- is it that hard to conclude that Pendel's information regarding Panamanian political secrets might be just a tad suspect?

Perhaps the whole point of this movie is to demonstrate that if you tell people what they want to hear, they'll listen to nearly anything. Desperation is the soup of the day in this film, and everyone is having a slurp. Unfortunately, as themes go, it's one of those cold, nasty soups served in swank restaurants where people pay extra for what amounts to yesterday's leftovers. Bad movie ideas, like bad soup, rarely become more palatable when left out overnight.

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