Dead ringer

John Boorman’s doppelganger
story The Tiger’s Tail is a
disappointing meditation on greed

DOUBLE DILEMMA: The Tiger’s Tail

by MATTHEW HAYS

Watching an actor as fine as Brendan Gleeson is such a pleasure, it’s difficult to begrudge a film he’s in. Legendary director John Boorman casts him as the lead in The Tiger’s Tail, which carries an intriguing doppelganger premise. Gleeson plays an Irish businessman caught up in the Mammon of Ireland, Inc; he’s a hard-driven philanderer, a distant father and he’s filthy rich.

That he’s totally soulless is the point this screenplay makes, a tad too clearly. Gleeson is set up as symbol No. 1, the end result of what happens to a human when he loses sight of what’s really important in life and just goes for the fancy cars, big houses and high-priced whores. The Tiger’s Tail then morphs into a mystery movie: Gleeson is sure he’s seen a man who’s the spitting image of himself, but no one else sees him initially, so he can’t figure out quite what’s going on. Is he losing his mind? Who is this mysterious double roaming the streets?

Boorman takes us into turf that is both creepy and comic, as Gleeson’s double moves into the house, starts banging his wife (and mistress) and begins tending to his company’s fortunes. The real Gleeson is identified by the fake Gleeson as the fraud, thus Gleeson gets shut out of his own house and life. It’s not a bad premise.

But it doesn’t work, largely because Boorman’s own screenplay is far, far too caught up in clunky symbolism. The real Gleeson is the New Ireland, the one that has forgotten the Old, the helpless and the needy. The virtual Gleeson is his past, come back to haunt him and to point out how he’s sold out all of his morals and values. It’s a lot like A Christmas Carol, without the presents.

And it’s such a pity, because the moralizing in The Tiger’s Tail couldn’t be more prescient, given the past month’s quasi-apocalyptic economic collapse of Western capitalist economies. But Boorman should know better: even epic themes about things like greed and humanity go down so much better when treated with a degree of subtlety.

THE TIGER’S TAIL OPENS THIS
FRIDAY, OCT. 24