John Boorman's The Tailor Of Panama was billed as a kind of anti-Bond movie when it was first released, in 2001, in between The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day. The parallels are fascinating for fans of Brosnan's Bond, whose womanising, boozing, largely amoral persona is dialled up to create an MI6 agent with no redeeming features whatsoever. Though later film The Matador comes close, Panama features what is Brosnan's most atypically charmless performance. The film reveals itself to be a Bond movie played as if Bond were real; the Bond movies that audiences know and love, meanwhile, are probably what would be the fantasy of Brosnan's Panama character, Andy Osnard. Osnard is closer to Sterling Archer than James Bond - he's a man in this line of work not for queen and country, but for himself, treating spy-work as a game, and manipulating anyone, innocent or otherwise, into getting him what he wants.
Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1
