Grade: B-

Verdict: Well-tailored but not as well as many of John Boorman's other films.

Details: Starring Pierce Brosnan and Geoffrey Rush. Directed by John Boorman. Rated R for strong sexuality, profanity and some violence. One hour, 49 minutes.

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Review: “The way I see it,” says Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), the title character in “The Tailor of Panama,” “We all have a dream of ourselves.”

Harry's dream of himself is what gets him into trouble in John Boorman's accomplished but flawed adaptation of the 1996 John le Carré novel. The story takes place in Panama, shortly after the ousting of Manuel Noriega. With the government in flux, the canal is in play. Meaning, a lot of very big powers are interested in a very little country.

Harry runs a tailor shop called Braithwaite & Pendel, which is designed to be a touch of London's Savile Row in the tropics. The tailoring room looks like a gentleman's club, and Harry, who wears pin-striped three-piece suits, speaks to his clients in that hushed, proprietory yet humble tone used by valets and butlers.

However, there is no Braithwaite (his portrait is actually Harry's Uncle Benny) and Harry is a Jewish ex-con who never so much as threaded a needle on Savile Row. But no one knows his secret. Not even his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) who's an assistant to the director of the canal. That's why Harry is the tailor of choice for all the rich and powerful left in Panama City. Even El Presidente. They all want to look “un-Panamanian” and Harry's charade appeals to them.

All is well until Andy Osnard (Pierce Brosnan), having been booted from Madrid for certain indiscretions, turns up. Describing himself as “the new boy at the British Embassy,” Andy is actually a spy (a nice play on Brosnan's James Bond identity). A lazy, corrupt, womanizing spy. He knows who Harry really is and uses Harry's predilection for fantasy and his local connections to save himself the trouble of actually having to work.

All Andy needs are some of Harry's yarns to feed periodically to the fellows back in Britain. When Harry comes up with a whopper about “the silent opposition,” i.e. the poor peasants supposedly carrying on the revolution secretly, Andy knows he's hit paydirt. There's nothing like the threat of a revolution to keep the bosses satisfied and the behind-closed-doors money flowing.

Boorman is a legendary director whose work ranges from “Point Blank” and “Deliverance” to “Excalibur” and “Hope and Glory” (one of the best movies of the '80s). He doesn't make many films — 14 in the last 35 years — so any time he does anything, attention must be paid.

There are many good things about this movie. At times, it approximates the wry tone of “Our Man in Havana,” the Graham Greene adaptation with Alec Guinness. But there's something wrong here. Going for both playful and poignant, Boorman can't get the mix quite right. The suffering of two former revolutionaries important to Harry doesn't jibe with Andy's sex capades or with the greediness-as-usual black humor in the scenes with the government types.

Where the picture does work is in the relationship between Harry and Andy. Rush delivers a shrewd, detailed performance as a jabbering little man who gets in trouble when he tries to swim with the big fish. Brosnan is even better. At first, he doesn't seem quick enough, not devilish enough. But you slowly realize he doesn't want to be those things. He's creating a different kind of trickster, one whose smugness is matched by his torpor. The only time Andy moves fast is when he's about to lose a lot of loot. Otherwise, watching Brosnan is like watching one long, lazy post-massage — or post-coital stretch. He's 007 on permanent vacation.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service