What to Stream: Pierce Brosnan Plays a Rougish Agent in 'The Tailor of Panama'

The Tailor of Panama (2001) Amazon Instant and iTunes

The Basics: Pierce Brosnan plays a darker kind of super-spy in John Boorman’s wickedly amusing adaption of John le Carré’s 1985 novel.

If You Liked: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Matador, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

The Nugget: A disgraced British intelligence agent (Brosnan) is exiled to Panama, where he forcibly enlists a lowly tailor (Geoffrey Rush) in his latest spy game.

During his four-movie stint as Bond….James Bond, Brosnan made little secret of wanting to play a grittier, meaner 007 — not unlike the version Daniel Craig is portraying right now. But at that point, the franchise’s producers were striving to recreate the Roger Moore —rather than the Timothy Dalton — era, and so the actor’s wishes went unheeded as he gamely fought his way through silly, bloated adventures like Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)and The World is Not Enough (1999). Fortunately, director John Boorman was willing to let Brosnan become the Bond he always longed to be in The Tailor of Panama.  Brosnan is clearly having a grand old time as roguish, disreputable secret agent Andy Osnard, who has all of Bond’s swagger, but maybe half of his smarts.  Rush makes a great comic foil, quickly figuring out how to manipulate this dim (but handsome) bulb to his own ends. Despite its third-act troubles, The Tailor of Panama marked a return to form for Boorman, whose last quality film was the 1987 semi-autobiographical World War II tale, Hope and Glory. (The sequel to that movie, Queen and Country, premiered at Cannes in May.) It’s also best to think of this as the capper to Brosnan’s Bond career rather than the execrable Die Another Day, which arrived in theaters one year later.