Cut and paste (4/1/01)
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The Tailor Of Panama. [John Boorman, 2001. From a novel by John Le Carré.]
Mephistophelean spook Pierce Brosnan [not at all the good guy] tries the patience of his superiors in London one time too many and gets exiled to a minor desk in a banana republic; where with admirable initiative he immediately sets about stirring up enough trouble to get himself promoted back to Europe. Zeroing in with unerring instinct on the local representative of Saville Row, Geoffrey Rush, as the guy most likely to know who in the capital city is dressing right or left, he exerts sufficient pressure with financial carrot and blackmailing stick to prompt Rush [by training and inclination an obliging guy] to tailor a story to fit Brosnan’s requirements — something which. less like silk than Spandex, stretches in due course to encompass Brosnan’s need to be able to report an imminent revolution that will necessitate very dramatic military intervention and an avalanche of unmonitored American cash. — Meanwhile, of course, in the best spook tradition, he is nailing everything with a pulse.
Not without its memorable observations [“They got Ali Baba,” somebody remarks apropos of Noriega’s buddies in the power elite, “but left behind the Forty Thieves”], its memorable moments [Brosnan and Rush meet to exchange information at a gay bar and dance together], and its memorable characters [particularly the real former revolutionaries depicted by Brendan Gleeson and Leonor Varela, who evidence all-too-vividly the real cost of standing up to the CIA’s stooges], but not really funny or cynical enough to measure up to the standards set, e.g., by
Our Man In Havana or
Wag The Dog. — Nor is it an especially profound observation at this point that the Great Powers create the truth they wish to discover in the postcolonial world; not when the guys in the briefing rooms who gesture with cigars are at present so busily plotting the conduct of the Colombian civil war. — But it’s good to see Boorman working again.
____________A bovinity that shapes our ends (3/30/01)
