Rating: 
Summary: Limp and obvious.
Review: Well, sometimes a director's pitiful inability to establish an appropriate pace is mistaken for the thoughtfulness, unhurriedness and other ingredients of a quality film made to last. In The Tailor Of Panama John Boorman is his old self, the man who made Arthurian lore look infinitely boring in his amorphous and pseudo-meaningful Excalibur, the man who had told the story of the Dublin's most celebrated criminal, the General, in a line of semi-disjointed episodes, showing the basic rudiments of cinematographer's skill only in starting and ending the film with the same finishing scene. He obviously prefers to have a well-known material, rich in colorful collisions and characters - they have to carry the weight of a film, make it interesting.
In The Tailor Of Panama the director treads the waters that are very much familiar to anyone who is not a stranger to the British tradition of mocking the antics of the big bosses from the frightfully named agencies responsible for the national security. An underdog gets into the grind, cons the surprisingly foolish and vain hierarchs with his endearingly unbelievable inventions - and more often than not gets away with it. A humble man vs. The State, a soothing fable for us common Joes. Graham Greene's Our Man In Havana is the most immediate example, the tip of the iceberg. As if that's not enough John Boorman takes on the motives from the most popular tale of surviving - with dignity - the troubled times in ultimately corrupted place, The Casablanca. The catch phrase about the absence of heroes made it to every review, meaningless as it is. The more direct quotation from the same source - " Maybe that's the beginning of a great friendship" - is less lucky. It looks like a pure commercial speculation, a hasty indulgence, something extra for a viewer's pleasure. There is not a drop of fresh blood in the whole film. Everything is so limp and obvious. The character's actions, motivations, emotions just hint on something we have read or seen before, in all the eagerness to please with utterly recognizable ingredients originality was shooed from the set - or maybe they had nothing to lure it with. Pierce Brosnan looks his usual self, a perfect, cynical, omnipotent male no one can resist, a model more than an actor. Geoffrey Rush portrays confusion, painful loyalty and vague greed with the grimaces you can forecast well in advance. To make their interactions livelier the director puts the actors on the electro-bed in bordello, makes them hug each other tenderly on the gay club's dance floor but these well-meaning gags fail to produce the belly laughs - it's a "quality film" after all, not a Jim Carey vehicle. The other actors also look as if they spend on the set the court-imposed hours for some minor misdemeanor. No stars are born, no career highlights for anyone. Everything is known from the beginning, it's all boringly predictable, unnecessarily detailed, explained when everything is evident without explanations. If you are looking for the perfect investment of these couple hours you've allotted for the pure entertainment - skip that film. It's plain boring.
If you possess the patience and understanding to appreciate an original, meaningful and coherent cinematic piece - take them somewhere else.
Rating: 
Summary: Wit and style from a very good Tailor!
Review: The Tailor of Panama is a smart, talky, clever character-based spy thriller. It's not a film loaded with action however. It is based on John le Carre's 1996 novel which was very much inspired and somewhat derivative of Graham Greene's satric spy novel: Our Man in Havana (which became a 1960 film starring Alec Guinness). The tone of Tailor fluctuates between an almost straight spy thriller and black comedy in sometimes unexpected and less than seamless ways. This will probably baffle some viewers who won't be able to shift quickly enough or accept that at times. Andy Osnard (Brosnan) is a British ( MI6 ) spy who has just about ruined his career by getting caught having scandalous affairs and not quite having the panache', charm, skill or charisma of James Bond. (Yes, the film if very aware and plays with the casting coup it enjoys by having the new 007 play this anti-Bond character in several ways--there's even a reference to Sean Connery if you're particularly observant). Andy is sent to Panama to lay low. Andy doesn't know how to lay low and is itching to prove himself and become an important agent--at least at first. Andy finds a local tailor named Harry Pendel (Rush) who has a secret past that Andy knows about and before long, Harry is telling Andy some spy stories. Harry has carved out a nice niche' for himself in Panama and has a pretty wife (Jaimie Lee Curtis) and two young children. He is a very able and skilled tailor and has gotten himself into too much debt by using his mistresses inheritance to buy a farm. Hobnobbing with all of the power brokers and older land-owners gives Harry some degree of prestige, but first and foremost he's a skilled tailor who can be trusted by his customers. Andy soon realizes Harry's stories aren't completely true...but Andyh can still broker the information and improve his stature.. Then, almost by accident, Harry begins to spin a yarn so good, that Andy knows just how to leverage the information so that he can in essence extort at least 15 million from the Americans. And maybe he'll just take the money and run There are lot of complications to the extortion plot. And things become riskier and more dangerous. Geoffrey Rush is very good here. He has less bravura in this role but is just as effective in his characterization here as he has been when he is expected to chew the scenery. Brosnan plays a character that has some similarities to his James Bond but has far less class, skill and ethics than Bond does. It's fun to watch particularly since as the film progresses we come to realize he is not the flawed good guy we are basically introduced at the beginning of the film. It works a little better than it would have because he is Pierce Brosnan who is known to audiences as 007. Brosnan isn't nearly the actor Rush is but most of the time he does very well. Jamie Lee Curtis is excellent and you believe that Rush and Curtis have been comfortably married for several years. A difficult to recognize Brendan Gleeson plays his role with the kind of gusto and energy we saw Al Pacino bring to Tony (Scarface) Montano. It doesn't quite become parody, but it's a performance that jumps too far out at you and is un-balanced. Another nice touch is having playwright/ occasional actor Harold Pinter turn up in a small role. The film eventually portrays the spy and diplomat business as pretty much a big farce in which con-men and seasoned opportunist can manipulate some degree of power and wealth by playing at espionage. The plot itself is really just one elaborate joke. It's not the kind of joke you laugh out loud at, and it doesn't quite pay-off in the way you might think it will. In the end, The Tailor of Panama is too derivative of Graham Greene and a bit too slight of a film to be considered one of the best of its genre. . . but it's actually something very worthwhile. It's surprisingly well-made and offers several layers to enjoy. Most will probably find themselves enjoying it more on their second of third viewing. The DVD quality is very good but not quite top-notch. When a disc is called special edition you expect to see a presentation that is way above average and a disc that is loaded with extras. This is dissapointing in that regard. It's a good package and not over-priced however. Among the extras is An alternate ending. Some will probably like the alternate ending more than varies in tone and spirit a great deal from the way the film currently ends is included. It's very interesting how drastically different this ending of the film is from the one that was ultimately decided upon. I like the ending used in the film much better than this one, but neither are complete audience pleasers. The Disc also included a 25 minute conversation with the lead actors called: The Perfect Fit: A Conversation with Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush. Writer-Director John Boorman's feature length commentary is very dry, but informative and contains very detailed information about the production of the film and many details about why certain decisions were made regarding the source novel. Put this one on your list to see if you like smart, clever, films with richly drawn characters. While it may not deliver exactly the kind of excitement you are expecting, it does deliver wit, and good performances. Christopher Jarmick,is the author of The Glass Cocoon with Serena F. Holder a critically acclaimed, steamy suspense thriller.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad!
Review: It's good to see a DVD like that without pixelsm good!!
Rating: 
Summary: A waste of film...
Review: I agree with Mark Fantino. This may be one of the worst movies I have seen in a long time. Not even the great cast could save the movie. Good actors can rarely overcome a screenplay that is this bad.
Rating:
Summary: Shockingly Terrible
Review: It's rare to a see a movie where it appears that the entire cast, director AND writer all phoned in their performances. But the Tailor of Panama is such a film. The heavy dialogue drowns itself and its actors, who don't seem to try to tread water. Rush and Brosnan are broad charicatures which might work in another film, but not here. The films jokes and attempts at wit are labored and artificial. What the heck does "Casablanca without the heroes" mean? The beauty of Casablanca was that there were no perfect heroes in that movie, everyone had their dark side. Watching this film made me flinch far too many times.
Rating:
Summary: A surprisingly bad movie.
Review: The movie starts slowly as you wait for pierce brosnan to be more a part of the movie. Then Brosnan is truly a dispictable character (unless you love sociopath sex addicts) with the only good guys being the revolutionaries and the tailor. There are plenty of vulgar language and dialog, plus some T and A, so this one is for 18 year olds and up, or no one at all.
In true left-wing Hollywood style, the bad guys win, and there are untrue references to President George Bush, "#41".
Rating:
Summary: The Second Worst Movie Ever Made.
Review: Absolutely terrible. What a pity, Mr. Rush is usually so wise in the films he stars in. This is certainly two hours you will never get back. I've been totally robbed.
Rating: 
Summary: FUNNY...WICKED...TWISTED...
Review: Some say slow... well, if you are used to the Hollywood loud explosion and machine guns killing 245 extras...
You can actually apreciate good acting, well thought scenes and excellent plot.
Rating:
Summary: Loved the book . . .
Review: But did not like the movie. It is true that good books (and Le Carre's Tailor of Panama is fantastic) rarely translate well to the screen -- or at least they don't do so if the individuals making the film do not attempt to tell a story and do not remain faithful to the storyline that worked so well, so neatly and suspensefully in print. The film throughout is choppy, so much so that you only see bits and pieces extracted from the story. It was as if the filmmakers just wanted to show us their favorite parts, but the error was to leave out the flow of information that ties the whole thing together. It is vignettes, not plot; an advertisement for the book rather than a real movie. Characters appear and disappear with no real meaning, neither adequately explained nor fleshed out. The main characters themselves are contrived rather than realistic (the opposite of the book's characters) and the actors were quite awkward. Rush is miscast, unable to turn the Tailor into a sympathetic and wily character. His emotions tumble this way and that, and his use of several different English accents to suit several occasions becomes awfully annoying, particularly because he whispers rather than speaks his lines. I kept having to turn the volume higher and I still couldn't quite get what he was saying! Brosnan plays his usual stylish, arrogant male, gracefully strutting through the scenes but struggling with trying to convey that his character is perverted and ultimately evil -- he just comes off as confused. After a while, I started to think that this would have been a much better film if Rush and Brosnan had switched roles, much like I heard Redford and Newman switched theirs on the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Think of it -- Brosnan playing out all levels of emotion, from friendship to familial loyalty to false bravado to connivance to failures. I tend to think that only he should have been the Tailor; Rush was too frantic, too limited in scope. On the other hand, Rush as the eccentric, egotistical Osnard, an unattractive man with an inexplicable attraction for women. But the film is as it is -- just a tumbled together script, not very true to the book, with a lack of depth, too much focus on Osnard's sex scenes, too little concentration on what is actually going on, and an ending that is implausible. The only highlight is Jamie Lee Curtis, who is perfect, absolutely perfect, in her role. Each line she delivers and each sentiment is balanced between restraint and abandon. She shines as an exceptional character/actress in an otherwise dull, dragging and complicated film. Recommendation? Avoid the film and read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not great, but still better than most studio fare
Review: The Tailor of Panama is not a Boorman film on the same level as Deliverance, Point Blank or the more recent The General, but it is far superior to most studio fare. The film has much to recommend it even if LeCarre's labyrinthian plotting is played here for comic effect. Philippe Rousselot's cinematography brings the exotic seediness of Panama to vivid life. Brosnan and Rush play off each other brilliantly (there is a strange homoerotic frisson to their relationship). The smaller parts filled in by John Fortune and Harold Pinter add to the charm of this meta-spy story. Boorman is one of the old breed of 60s/70s directors, whose ambitions have been stifled by the sheer awfulness of American studio decision making of the last decade. It is nice to see him working even if one senses his wilder impulses are being held in check. The transfer is excellent and Boorman is as articulate as always on the commentary track.
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