It is a deadly combination and it delivers—the coming together of John Le Carre, thespy thriller master, and director John Boorman leads to a mixture of genres: the detectivestory with political farce. Based on Le Carre's famous novel, the movie begins withAndrew Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) barging into the prestigious tailoring shop of a half-breedPanamanian, Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), to offer him a deal of a lifetime. Osnard is MI6and a typical British degenerate—he is capable of sleeping with almost every woman hecan lay his hands on and has no qualms in conning his own country. The issue at hand isthe controversy surrounding the Panama Canal after its successful hand-over from Americato Panama in 1999. The Americans are eager to intervene again and Osnard manipulates thegray areas of British culpability in order to provide them with an excuse, and walk awaywith a lot of money.
Osnard first tears Pendel's respectability to shreds (the tailor is actually anex-convict) before forcing him to act his spy. Pendel acquiesces like a victim—hethen begins playing his own game. He cons Osnard with stories about the President ofPanama, whom he gets to measure with his tailoring tape, trying to bypass the Anglo-Saxonworld in matters relating to the canal. He also feeds him with fake notions about a silentopposition attempting to overthrow the regime. Harry's object is to help someex-radical friends. But his old instincts make him enjoy the sport for its own sake aswell. He is actually Osnard's alter ego—both men represent the inverted, screwedup side of male bonding. In a dark, humorous take on that tradition, the two straight guysare compelled, at one point, to dance together in a gay bar. Harry's game goes awryas the Americans actually decide to invade Panama on the basis of his stories.
Osnard walks with the loot, meant to fund the silent opposition, after almost bangingHarry's hot shot wife. In the novel, he had actually done it—Harry had alsowalked alive into a raging fire. Here he gets to live—the basic absurdity ofAnglo-American politics, a dimension that had emerged with force in Le Carre's work,gets tamed down in the bargain. But tight, darkly lit, sweaty shots, plus a couple of hardsex-laden, morally ambiguous moments provide the necessary, insidiously funny tone to themovie.
