John Boorman is a mystery to me. He is responsible for great Irish films such as 'The General', fabulous fantasy 'Excalibur', wartime drama 'Hope & Glory' and the masterpiece 'Deliverance'. And then there is this piece of junk....I cannot countenance how he came to produce this...Brendan Gleeson plays Liam O'Leary, a successful businessman. He starts seeing his double at various locations. He is unhappily married to Kim Cattrall and has a son who has Communist views. His son is played by his biological son Briain. Kim Cattrall's Irish accent wasn't too bad I suppose. It's a pity her wooden acting was the same as usual. On the evidence of Gleeson Jnr's acting here, he has a big career ahead of him...stacking shelves. To cut a long story short, the doppelganger succeeds in infiltrating his life and takes over from him, successfully convincing his wife and son that the real Liam is in fact a fake. There are a few ridiculous ideas in this film - Kim Cattrall can't tell her husband apart from his twin brother, her son cannot spot the difference either except that his father is 'acting strangely'. The last straw is when we are expected to accept that Sinead Cusask (age 60) is Brendan Gleeson's mother (age 52). At this point, I found the whole thing such a ridiculous film and so disrespectful of the viewer that I wanted to switch off. However, I endured to the end and it got no better. The main reason I watched it in the first place was because if was filmed in Ireland very close to where I work and I wanted to see those locations on screen. They looked very nice indeed - it's a pity that the dog of a script and the outrageous plot weren't up to scratch.
Review of The Tiger's Tail
