Disgraced British agent Andy Osnard is packed off to Panama out of the way. Eager to get back into his boss' good books, he wants to provide him with some useful information. Choosing Harry Pendel, a tailor who is well-known in Panama, as his spy, he pays him to get hold of information relevant to the Panama Canal, hoping that some of it will prove useful. The fact that Harry is married to Louisa, who is the PA to the President of the Panama Canal, seems to be promising. Harry, initially reluctant to participate, is eventually lulled by much-needed cash. Unfortunately, he is not as well-connected as Andy hopes, and in the end, he makes up a story of revolution that Andy can report back to London. Will Harry admit that his story is a lie before the big guns come in? And how will it affect his hitherto peaceful life in Panama?

I am very fond of Pierce Brosnan; he is good to look at and makes me smile. I'm not convinced he is a particularly strong actor though. As Andy Osnard, he is very like every other character he has played in other films, such as the James Bond ones, The Thomas Crown Affair and Dante's Peak. He's not bad here, he does a perfectly adequate job and more, it is just that he doesn't show any originality and it is hard to tell whether he's actually acting or not. He does get to show a nasty side at times, which spices the role up a little, but it's still not really enough to make a great impact, at least not on me.

I'm not entirely sure why Jamie Lee Curtis took on the the role as Louisa Pendel, just because it isn't much of a role for an experienced actress like her to get her teeth into. Louisa is very much a secondary character, and one that any actress with a modicum of talent could have played. That aside, she is perfectly convincing in the role - I just would have preferred that she had more to play with. Another secondary character is Mickie, played by Brendan Gleeson - I thought he did a great job of acting drunk, loud and generally unhappy with the state of politics in Panama. A couple of other actors caught my eye just because I recognised them. We have David Hayman from Trial and Retribution as Osnard's daft boss - Hayman is ideal to play the role of someone in charge, but he slightly overdid it here and just looked silly. Then there is a very young-looking Daniel Radcliffe as Harry's son. He doesn't have much of a role, but it is interesting to see what he was up to before Harry Potter - although only just because this film was released in 2001, the same as the first Harry Potter film.

I really wanted to like this film; certainly on paper, it sounds great. However, it just doesn't really work on screen and I have been hard-pushed on more than one occasion to actually get through the film at all. If you're a big Le Carre fan, or you really like any of the main actors, then it's perhaps worth a watch, but personally I wouldn't pay good money to watch it - no doubt it will be shown on TV at some point. Not recommended.