The premise still provides some fun, but only Le Carre fans with tin ears and clouded eyes will fail to note the film's sour tone, crude performances and drab look.

| Jul 15, 2023

Boorman wants to turn the novel’s rueful satire into something sharp and sweaty, but the tone veers all over the place, and the plot feels like reckless fantasy.

| Feb 7, 2023

Smart and challenging though it may be at times, The Tailor of Panama remains fragmented in unsatisfying ways.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 14, 2022

Brosnan... completely alters the tone of the movie with every scene he's in, bringing a level of smarminess that makes it far more interesting than just a bureaucratic spy thriller

| Original Score: 6/10 | Sep 11, 2014

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jan 18, 2013

Not a great movie -- for adults only.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 1, 2011

Boorman has crafted a witty, classy and richly enjoyable morality play, which skewers the mercenary self-interest behind Anglo-American imperialism almost as an afterthought.

| Jun 24, 2006

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 6, 2005

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 30, 2005

Funny, frisky and always on the right side of plausible. Mission accomplished.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 13, 2004

I had forgotten that thrillers could possibly be this much fun and rippingly intelligent at the same time.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 25, 2003

| Original Score: B+ | May 22, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 14, 2003

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 21, 2003

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2003

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 30, 2002

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 15, 2002

If you think the spy-thriller genre has been streamlined and spoofed and subverted until nothing new can be done to it, think again.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2002

It doesn't feel like a normal espionage thriller; it feels much, much better.

| Original Score: A? | Aug 12, 2002

A broad, ribald circus flagrantly in love with the English language, The Tailor bustles with swaggering, jubilant showmanship.

Full Review | Aug 10, 2002