Tailor’s trailer tops movie’s mission
by Mike McDermott, reporter

   In the vast world of film entertainment, my favorite tool of promotion is the movie trailer.

   This trailer that I refer to is not the portable unit on wheels that houses the actors while on location, but the previews before each film we view at the theater. Trailers are even put on videos now.

   In The Tailor of Panama, the preview depicts a story of foreign intrigue, deception and exotic locales.

   I love my previews, those little slices of the movie pie that we’re shown to tease and taunt us, to raise our interest and coax us into handing over our money to view the entire product.

   Oh, and did I mention deception? One of my favorite aspects of the movie trailer is most everybody’s least favorite aspect: the clever way they deceive us into going to their movie.

   In Tailor, one of the greatest deceptions in this story’s plot was the afore-mentioned premise on which promoters got us into that theater chair in the first place. I do not find it fascinating how some movies, like this one, turn out to be so different from their trailers.

   Tailor is a movie in search of an identity. It had the appearance of a potentially good spy film: an acclaimed novel by John le Carre, who also contributed to the screenplay; an excellent cast including Pierce Brosnan, a logical choice for a spy thriller; Geoffrey Rush, Academy Award-winning actor, and Jamie Lee Curtis, sexy, easy on the eyes, usually adaptable to a variety of roles.

   The plot set in Panama seems promising.

   A simple good-hearted tailor, played by Rush, harbors a secret prison-related past. His adoring and unsuspecting wife, played by Curtis, also happens to work for the Romanian government. Add Brosnan, a “me-first” sleazy information specialist of the British government who is a fallen spy sent to Panama “to stay out of trouble.”

   Sounds at least interesting if not intriguing? Nah.

   I can’t say I can blame the actors, all convincing in the roles, with the major exception of Curtis, who is terribly miscast as the wife of the tailor. She’s just too sexy, even toned-down, to be the wife of this fop of a tailor.

   All the bare-skin love scenes involve Brosnan and some gal who works for the foreign embassy. Curtis is still a good actress, and, for the most part, Rush, Brosnan and the supporting cast do a credible job.

   Could it be the screenplay that’s the problem here? It’s not exactly a “train wreck,” but it would be fair to say it’s missing at least one engine, a club car, a couple of wheels and the caboose!

   The story derails early on from all its missing parts. We know how the tailor has a shady past. We know he was at one time involved with the “silent resistance,” an anti-government movement during Noriega’s time. His assistant at the tailor shop, Marta, was once involved.

   And we find out Brosnan’s character, Osmond, wants to know more about this, but we are made aware too early that he plans to deceive the Brits and Americans, with information gathered from the tailor, into believing the control of the canal is in jeopardy. Then he will take these governments for millions of dollars to stop the “made-up” canal take over.

   Okay. So fill us in on the details. How long was Harry in the resistance? Why was he? Why doesn’t his American wife know? Why do an Anglo-American woman and an Anglo-English tailor have two very Hispanic children? These glaring examples of the inconsistencies are a terrible waste of celluloid.

   The film at times tries to set itself up as a dark comedy, and then leaves that genre altogether and skips right over foreign intrigue to a messy relationship film. Then it revisits dark comedy briefly.

   Oh what a web we weave when we practice to deceive the general public. Does the phrase “two hours of my life I will never get back” mean anything? If I rated films on a four-star scale, I would say about this movie that the sky is cloudy, no stars visible. The Tailor of Panama is missing a good pattern book, some decent fabric and a skilled seamstress.

   Odds are the film will already be on video by the time you finish reading this review. Even as a rental, I still couldn’t recommend it.