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Video Reviews May 13, 2001 - The Tailor of Panama By The verdict: 9/10 ñ An impeccably dressed thriller. "The Tailor of Panama" is the latest John Le CarrÈ novel to make it to the big screen. A stroke of casting genius puts Pierce Brosnan as the anti-hero Andy Osnard, a British secret agent banished to the backwater of Panama for an ill-advised dalliance with the boss's wife. He is certainly no James Bond ñ no gadgets, no sophistication and no bad guys. At least no real bad guys. Osnard enlists the help of Panama City's top Savile Row tailor, Harry Pendleton (Geoffrey Rush), to get an insider's view of the city's elite. After all, Harry dresses the president, the business leaders and the criminals. Who better to find out what's going on? The only problem is that nothing is going on. But Harry needs the money Osnard offers him for information to pay off debts he's hiding from his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis). Once he gets a taste of MI6's deep pockets, he can't resist. He begins making up an intricate web of lies about a pending bloody coup that could put the vitally important Panama Canal into the "wrong hands". Osnard catches on, but since his bosses are so thrilled with his work and the information he's passing on, they keep giving him money, which he skims for himself before buying more dubious info from Pendleton. Pretty soon, everything has spun badly out of control: the Brits have enlisted the Americans to help fight this threat that the CIA is egg-faced over having known nothing about! Osnard can't keep pushing Pendleton for long, and Pendleton is having an increasingly difficult time keeping all his lies straight, so they go for one big final score: $20 million to fund a homegrown guerilla force to combat the anti-capitalist insurgents (no bother that not a stitch of proof can be shown for the existence of either).
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