Take it in a little: Restless, ruthless and retired spy Alex Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) tries to get the dirt from Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), who happens to be The Tailor of Panama

That lady-killing, mink-glove-employing, shaken-not-stirred-martini-swilling, quip-flinging, fancy-gadget-wielding, tuxedo-wearing, ever-leering stud was always a bit of a blackguard, a rogue, saving the world his way and getting this week’s most gorgeous girl in the process. 007. Bond, James Bond. Sean Connery defined the role in the 1960s with his narrow escapes and unruffled victory. Then Roger Moore took over for a long time.

  And when Connery tried a comeback Bond in 1983’s Never Say Never Again, the filmmakers tried to put some mileage on him. He had a motorcycle instead of that Astin Martin, smoked low-tar cigarettes and quenched his thirst with diet soda rather than gin. Still a hero, though, and villain beware. But what if he’d gone a different way, into ennui and cynicism. The Cold War ends, and the world isn’t so easy to save anymore. And the retirement benefits really, really suck. So isn’t it about time to work his wiles in the interest of his golden years. Well, maybe not Bond, actually. But Double-O Somebody Else. And that’s exactly what we get in John Boorman’s deliciously entertaining The Tailor of Panama.

  Based on the novel by John Le Carré and adapted for the screen by Le Carré, Boorman and Andrew Davies, The Tailor of Panama is a Central American hoot, a delightfully complicated scam flick with just enough serious political concern to give the picture texture and heft. The central casting is masterful. Pierce Brosnan, far and away the best of the latter-day Bonds, plays Andy Osnard, a handsome-devil British spy who has gotten cozy with the wives and mistresses of too many British bigwigs and finds himself banished to Panama not long after the United States has handed over the canal to the leaders of the country it cleaves.

  The narrative goes this way: Andy just can’t stand being on the sidelines. So pretty soon he’s up to a whole lot of various no good. Mainly, he’s twisting the arm of Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush, blessed with another meaty role and absolutely at the top of his game), a one-time British arsonist who has established himself as Panama’s leading clothier. Harry was Manuel Noriega’s personal tailor, and he continues to dress most of the movers and shakers in Panama City. Andy figures that Harry has rubbed elbows with so many politically powerful people for so long that he just has to know the dirt on somebody. Moreover, Andy takes notice that Harry’s wife, Louisa (Jamie Lee Curtis), is a high-ranking assistant to Ernesto Delgado (Diomara De Ruiz), the nation’s new chief administrator for the Panama Canal.

  Well, there’s plenty of moral rot in the aftermath of Noriega. And various CIA shenanigans have left a less-than-stable democracy at the helm. But the fact is that Harry doesn’t know meaningful squat. He makes suits. He’s desperately determined, however, to distract Andy from telling Louisa about his criminal past. And to keep the bully at bay, Harry makes up a story that will enable Andy to move back into the international spy spotlight. Harry tells Andy the Panamanians have decided to sell their canal and that the Chinese are central among the prospective buyers. That whopper’s enough to bring Teddy Roosevelt himself springing from the grave and rough-riding to the rescue. It doesn’t matter that Andy doesn’t believe Harry’s tale, for the spy knows a good yarn when he hears one.

  We can sense the quick strokes the filmmakers have to give the more tangential elements in the inevitably knotty Le Carré plot. The tree of Louisa’s relationship with Delgado is planted but doesn’t really bear fruit. Harry’s psychic interaction with the ghost of his old criminal mentor (Harold Pinter) should probably have been pruned from the film text. But in contrast, the political courage and mission of anti-Noriegans Mickie (Brendan Gleeson) and Marta (Leonor Varela) should have been delivered in greater detail and with more clarity.

  Still, Boorman and his collaborators nicely manage to convey a bedrock gravitas without allowing it to divert them from their fun. The dialogue in this film is as sharp as I’ve seen in a while, everywhere clever without resorting to the crude puns that so often erupt from the lips of James Bond. And the end of the picture is a rush. From the beginning, the filmmakers establish that right-wingers in the American government and military are licking their chops for a reason to take back the canal.

  Andy and Harry provide just what they want. Scenes in the American war room recall those in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece Dr. Strangelove, with Dylan Baker standing in here for George C. Scott’s lunatic air force commander. And that, folks, is tall cotton.