The Tailor of Panama (2001)

You can always tell a film based on a novel intended to sell in book form, by the time spent on subplots and establishing local flavour. This is a le Carré espionage thriller set in post-cold-war Panama. Before the collapse of the Soviet bloc, le Carré's work was masterly in setting up hair-raisingly believable tension, but since the world stage has shifted, his accuracy of touch has faltered and his plots have become less credible.

In the film, Geoffrey Rush excellently plays an expatriate English tailor who gets caught up in the heady swirl of political espionage. Piers Brosnan is much less persuasive as a sort of errant James Bond, and Jamie Lee Curtis plays, well, herself, looking oddly out of place.

At one stage the two male characters arrange a meeting at a busy gay club ... pretty conspicuous would you say? There is a drag act in progress on stage.

HF April 2003

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