After a decade off the screen (big or little), spymaster novelist John le Carré reactivated the brand using the comically off-kilter template of Graham Greene’s OUR MAN IN HAVANA/’59 only to find similar problems balancing the funny against the serious.* Again, an ex-pat Brit businessman settled in a Latin country is pressured into working as a spy for the home team. But finding little info to peddle, he starts making up conspiracies to have something to sell. Hey, it's a business, give the customer what they want. In both cases, it’s news on the revolution, and in both cases, things grow out of hand and people start dying for real. In PANAMA, the tone is considerably darker which does make it easier to pull off, though nothing in here hits the comic heights of watching Alec Guinness get recruited by Noël Coward between stalls in ‘The Gents.’ But with Geoffrey Rush, Pierce Brosnan, Brendan Gleeson & Jamie Lee Curtis, there’s little to complain about in the acting department. And if director Jon Boorman can’t quite make all the details clear, the basic arc of selling a non-existent coup to force the U.S. into ordering a takeover of the Canal comes across well enough between suit alterations. (Rush’s tailoring skills a Chaplinesque tour de force even a bit of undercranking can't kill; while Brosnan’s slightly past-prime form defangs any nasty edge from his constant womanizing.) Exceptionally well shot by Phillipe Rousselot and amusingly scored (with borrowed Spanish flair) by Shaun Davey, it’s a kind of ironic civilized entertainment not much encountered these days. Even with shortcomings, worth the trip.
DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, OUR MAN IN HAVANA.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Le Carré jealous of Greene’s rep & range as writer & film enthusiast?
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