By Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN -- Welcome to Panama, British spy Andy Osnard is told; it's " 'Casablanca' without heroes." This is indeed the case in John Boorman's film version of John le Carre's darkly comic novel about spies and befuddled ex-pats in Panama following the United States' return of the Canal to that country. And Boorman's grand joke of casting Pierce Brosnan, the screen's current James Bond, as Osnard, the sleaziest and most immoral operator in the British Secret Service, only underscores the film's tongue-in-cheek ap-proach to the spy "game."

What might tax Columbia's marketing mavens and restrain acceptance by American audiences of Boorman's film is that the irony and wit are distinctly British. Le Carre -- who for the first time exec produces a film version of one of his novels -- said in an interview last week that the movie might flop in the States, but Europeans will love it. He could be dead right.

Americans love movie spies to be ruthless or far-fetched, but not the cads and cons on display here. Le Carre, of course, knows better.

The story is somewhat reminiscent of Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana," wherein a mild-mannered vacuum salesman in Cuba becomes a British spy. Not knowing what to do, he forwards to London diagrams of vacuum cleaners, which he claims are plans for a new secret weapon.

But in Panama, it's a simple tailor the British recruit as an agent. Well, not so simple, actually -- a fact that will cause his downfall. For Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush) has invented himself. Established in Panama, where he creates suits in the best Saville Row tradition for the country's elite, Harry has managed to marry an American engineer's daughter, Louisa (Jamie Lee Curtis), and create a comfortable life without anyone getting wise to his past.

He actually learned his craft in the slammer, doing time for an insurance scam for his uncle (Harold Pinter), who appears occasionally as a diaphanous Greek chorus that urges him in every crisis to dissemble. The uncle established Harry in Panama with his fake identity, which would have remained in place if Andy had never shown up.

Andy, a troublesome agent with problems ranging from gambling debts to women, has been posted to Panama for "his sins." Andy zeroes in on Harry as a British national likely to overhear things while measuring businessmen and government officials for suits.

In debt and about to lose his farm, Harry agrees to slip information to Andy, most of which he makes up. He claims that the Canal is about to be sold to foreign interests and that his best drinking buddy, Mickie (Brendan Gleeson), and his disfigured assistant, Marta (Leonor Varela), both former members of the anti-Noriega underground, are leaders of the "Silent Opposition." So silent is this opposition that neither London nor Washington has ever heard of it.

So while Andy conducts an affair with an embassy official (Catherine McCormack) and pulls the wool over the eyes of the ambassador (David Hayman) -- or does he? -- he decides to make a fortune off this dubious information. While he too is suspicious of the veracity of this Silent Opposition, if he can keep the rumors hot for a few more days, he will escape to Switzerland with cool millions.

Ah, how far all this is from Ian Fleming and, for that matter, the usual le Carre. While we appreciate this highly sophisticated spoof of the whole spy business -- one certainly allowed to le Carre after having probed its depths as no writer ever has -- it's hard to work up much enthusiasm for any of its characters or sympathize with their plight.

Those with integrity -- Mickie, Marta and Louisa -- are clueless, while the rest are so engaged in their own self-interests as to be caricatures rather than characters. Everything that happens in "Tailor" is, deliberately, a joke. A grand joke, perhaps, but how are we supposed to feel about the pain and, in one case, the suicide caused by these jokesters?

The real Casablanca never had any heroes. (Indeed, it never was a port of exit for refugees as so fictionally portrayed in the Warner Bros. fantasy.) The same might hold true for Panama, but how odd to make a whole movie to declare this mundane fact. As with another Boorman foray into Third World exotica, "Beyond Rangoon," "Tailor" at times rings hallow.

Brosnan gets a chance to display a darker side that might literally make people squirm. He is despicable and attractive at the same moment, a truly memorable villainous protagonist. Rush again disappears into a totally different character whose layers of untruth peel away to reveal the good-natured but weak-willed individual underneath.

Curtis is underemployed, but Gleeson and Varela give the film its moral backbone with striking portraits of people struggling to find meaning in their lives after the revolution.

Technical credits are exceptional, especially Philippe Rousselot's camerawork in the high rises and squalid streets of Panama and Derek Wallace's atmospheric production design.