Pierce Brosnan had been playing MI6 agent James Bond for six years when he got the chance to play a very different version of an MI6 agent in another movie. After playing the television detective Remington Steele for five years, fans wanted to see Brosnan take on the role of 007. His first turn as Bond came in 1995 in the movie GoldenEye, and it was a glorious return to form for the super spy, with Brosnan fitting in perfectly to the role.
However, things soon went off the rails for Brosnan, thanks to his James Bond movies going a little too far over the line with everything from invisible cars to ice castles. After he made his third Bond movie, Brosnan took another role as an M16 agent before he finally finished his 007 role in 2022 with Die Another Day. The movie that Brosnan made right before Die Another Day was a spy thriller called The Tailor of Panama, and he played a crooked secret agent who was the opposite of everything that James Bond stood for.
Pierce Brosnan Appeared In The Tailor Of Panama While He Was Still James Bond
Brosnan Made This Movie Before His Last Bond Movie
Pierce Brosnan was seemingly the perfect James Bond when he signed onto the franchise. He was suave, and as he proved on his hit television series Remington Steele, he was also easy to see as the hero after the dark turn Bond took with Timothy Dalton. After making three Bond movies, though, Brosnan took on a role in a different spy movie, playing an MI6 agent who was far from a good man. In The Tailor of Panama, Brosnan played Andy Osnard, an MI6 agent reᴀssigned to Panama after an affair with a foreign minister’s mistress.
The affair seems similar to James Bond, but the rest of the movie shows that Andy is nothing like 007. Based on the John le Carré novel, the plot sees Andy meet a tailor in Panama named Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), a man who is a former conman who has tried to go straight. Not even his wife knows about his past. When Andy learns this, he offers Pendel a chance to help him by getting him information about the elite in the country. However, Pendel makes up some stories, which Andy leaks to the U.S. government, and it almost starts a war.
Pierce Brosnan’s The Tailor Of Panama Character Was Everything James Bond Isn’t
Brosnan Was A Manipulative Villain In The Tailor Of Panama
Andy Osnard shares very little with James Bond. In fact, the only real comparison between them is that they both have an insatiable taste for women, so much so that it gets them in trouble. While Bond is often betrayed by the most lethal Bond Girls, Andy is the one doing the devious work here. The British government had to reᴀssign him when he cheated with the wrong woman. When he arrived in Panama, he began seducing Pendel’s wife, Louisa (Jamie Lee Curtis), who works for the Panama Canal Authority.
He also proved that he would rather use someone else to get information than do any groundwork himself, and he didn’t care if the information was real or not. He almost caused an actual military strike by the U.S. government thanks to his fake information, and he did nothing to stop it. In fact, he requested $15 million from the Pentagon to stop the fictional attack, and then escaped at the end with the money. In this film, the MI6 agent was the closest thing there is to a villain, even though he sees himself as so much more.
It only took one movie in The Tailor of Panama to show that he could be just as devious, dishonest, and deplorable.
Through four James Bond movies, Pierce Brosnan proved to be an honorable, if flawed, MI6 agent. However, it only took one movie in The Tailor of Panama to show that he could be just as devious, dishonest, and deplorable, even when playing the same character type. It allowed Brosnan a chance to make a clean break from Bond after Die Another Day, and he used his character in this other MI6 movie to influence later roles in films like The Matador, and more recently, Black Bag.
