Up to no good
by Chris Dashiell

Some movies seem better while you're watching them than they actually are. Sexy Beast, for example, directed by newcomer Jonathan Glazer, dazzled me with its showy style and propulsive energy while I was in the dark of the theater. Out in the light of day I began to notice the film's slipshod narrative method and threadbare ideas. But to tell the truth, I don't mind being fooled a little - if it involves a jaw-dropping performance from one of the world's best actors.

Gary "Gal" Dove (Ray Winstone) has spent most of his life in organized crime. Getting older and fatter, and tired of the life, he has retreated to Spain, where he lounges about in a villa with his wife (Amanda Redman) and a couple of friends from the old days. In the opening sequence, a huge boulder rolls down the hillside, barely missing him and landing in the swimming pool. No one can accuse Glazer (or the screenwriters, Louis Mellis and David Scinto) of subtlety here, but the sequence is funny in its sheer outlandishness.

Bad news suddenly intrudes on Gal's little world. An old partner in crime named Don Logan is coming, and he wants Gal to participate in a job. Gal wants to stay out of trouble, and he is determined to say no, but the very name of this Don Logan obviously fills him with fear. For a while, Glazer fumbles about trying to build up tension. Prior to this movie he has only directed commercials and rock videos, and his work here often seems nervous and exaggerated.

But then Don Logan finally arrives, and he is played by Ben Kingsley as a seething little Cockney punk, full of rage and disgust and twisted sexual repression. Sometimes he hardly says a word. Other times he bursts into explosions of furious invective, almost stream of consciousness. It is an absolutely astounding performance.

Usually, even when the very best performers lose themselves in a role, you can still sense an actor's persona. There remains some familiarity in the voice, or the manner, that reminds us that this is so-and-so, the actor. Here, it's as if Ben Kingsley is actually someone you have never seen before. He seems twenty years younger, with a different voice, a different way of holding himself. He really is this terrifying, hilarious, sickening little monster with a big bald head who puts his teeth into anyone who gets in the way and won't let go. Every minute he is on screen, he is fascinating.

Winstone is himself one of the best English actors around. And he is an asset here, with his big physical presence combined with a tentativeness, a sense of holding back that seems authentic for a character who desperately wants out of the business but still has all the instincts for it. He plays the central character, and you can tell that he relishes his scenes with Kingsley. But even he practically gets blown off the screen by the man who played Gandhi and Itzhak Stern, and who apparently can play just about anyone he pleases.

Sexy Beast eventually evolves into a heist flick involving scary mob boss Ian McShane. There are some pleasures along the way, although Glazer tends to outsmart himself with his flashbacks and his gimmicky MTV style. Sometimes the film is quite funny, sometimes it's lame. The acting is generally fine, and overall it's not bad.

And then, there's Ben Kingsley. What else can I say?

Since the end of the Cold War, all the poor old spooks have been bereft. Without an enemy by which to define themselves, what is there to live for? They're just itching to dig up something - in Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, whatever. And if that doesn't work, well - maybe they'll have to create an enemy.

Such, in crude outline, is the premise of The Tailor of Panama, a John Boorman film adapted from a John Le Carré novel. It's about a scoundrel in the British Secret Service named Andy Osnard, an inveterate schemer and sex addict who is banished to Panama after getting in trouble with his superiors.Osnard discovers that a tailor named Harry Pendel, a man who provides elegant suits for the highest officials in the Panamanian government, has a concealed criminal past, and he uses this knowledge to force Pendel into providing him with secret information. The trouble is, Pendel is a natural raconteur, a spinner of tales, and to get Andy off his back he makes up a whole bunch of skullduggery involving a plot to sell the canal to the Chinese, and a secret resistance movement ready to seize power at any time. The spy senses a meal ticket in the making, and the eager beavers in the London and Washington "intelligence" community are only too glad to participate in the delusion.

It's a satire, you see. A comedy. That is, it would have been if Boorman and his screenplay had been willing to run with this idea and make the film wholly satiric, wholly comic. But unfortunately, the film also tries to be a suspense thriller, a love story, and god knows what else, until it finally becomes what they used to call mulligan stew.

Osnard is played by Pierce Brosnan. And of course, that actor is the latest incarnation of James Bond, a fact which Boorman must have thought added a delicious twist to the character. There's no doubt that Brosnan is enjoying the opportunity of playing a heel. Most actors who care about their craft want to break out of typecasting from time to time. He manages to be rather amusing in some of his scenes, but on the whole I'd have to say he was miscast. His nastiness has too much of the wink and nudge about it - he's only playing at being a cad rather than convincing us that he is one.

On the other hand, there is Geoffrey Rush, in the title role, doing creditable work in a part that requires him to juggle hapless foolery with elegance and genuine passion. He works hard to hold the film together, and indeed he is the best thing about it, but the script doesn't help him out quite enough. For one thing, his American wife (conveniently in the employ of a top adminstrator of the Canal) is played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who fails to convince in her misconceived and poorly written part. For another, Harold Pinter pops up, Death of a Salesman style, as Harry's dead mentor, warning Harry about this or that - and the device is never interesting, only confusing. Boorman also throws in a relationship between Osnard and an embassy offical played by Catherine McCormack, and for good measure he has Andy hit on Harry's wife too - not for any real narrative purpose, but apparently for the sake of a gratuitous boob shot or two.

It's a shame really, because the basic idea is good. And the director sometimes shows inspiration - there's an early sequence where Brosnan and Rush are driving through Panama City, with various fleeting scenes revealed in doorways, that promises something more soulful. The picture is best when it makes fun of the pompous self-importance of spooks, and dares to portray the political and military establishment as an empire of idiots. But Boorman never really gets in stride, never finds a rhythm, almost everything in the style - tone, editing, pace, even camera placement - just seems off, scattershot, lacking conviction.

I imagine that Columbia was expecting a thriller, not an offbeat political comedy. They marketed it as a thriller. Well, this is a case where accurate marketing probably wouldn't have made much of a difference. What I have found, though, as much as I hate to admit it, is that the price of admission can affect my judgment. I saw The Tailor of Panama in a second-run theater for two bucks. Consequently I enjoyed it more than I expected, and was inclined to be more forgiving of its faults - until I tried to imagine paying eight dollars for it.

I couldn't.

©2001 Chris Dashiell
CineScene