THE TIGER’S TAIL (John Boorman). 103 minutes. Opens Friday (October 24). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
I saw John Boorman’s The Tiger’s Tail in January 2007, when it closed the Palm Springs Film Festival. At the time, it felt like a casual disappointment from a once-great director, destined for DVD obscurity. I’m not entirely sure why it merits theatrical release now, almost two years later.
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Positioning itself as a psychological drama, the film follows a successful real estate developer named Liam O’Leary (Brendan Gleeson), whose life begins to splinter after he glimpses his exact double wandering around Dublin.
Liam is understandably freaked out. Is a rival messing with him? Is he being haunted by an evil doppelgänger? Is he finally cracking under the stress of certain morally questionable business dealings?
The answer is nowhere near as interesting – though Boorman’s script certainly tries to make it so, orchestrating a series of creaky complications that result in Liam’s ejection from his own life when his double steals his identity. The joke is that no one cares enough about Liam to notice – least of all his distracted wife, played by a woefully miscast Kim Cattrall.
I’m fond of Gleeson, who broke out as the Irish gangster Martin Cahill in Boorman’s The General and was most recently seen in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges. This movie just doesn’t give him much to do besides wander around Dublin looking alternately confused and implacable as the plot dictates.
He can do better. So can Boorman.
