Starring Brendan Gleeson, Kim Cattrall. Written and directed by John Boorman. (14A) 106 min. Opens Oct 24.
John Boorman’s modern fable about a corrupt but basically decent businessman (Brendan Gleeson) whose life gets upended by the arrival of his own doppelganger is meant as a withering critique of Ireland’s class divide, but its dramatic particulars are so laboured they overwhelm the film’s social commentary.
Things start promisingly enough with a gruelling, extended traffic jam sequence that plays like a Week-End in Dublin. There’s a decent laugh in the next scene when the man presenting Gleeson’s Liam O’Leary with an award for his work as a real estate developer jokes that James Joyce wouldn’t recognize the city anymore. Liam’s triumph is belied, however, by the ruinous truth of his professional and personal fortunes — which is why, when his double (Gleeson), seen skulking about like a horror-movie villain in the early part of the film, attempts to steal his identity, he finds that it’s not much easier being a prince than a pauper.
As a metaphor for a society in the throes of a money-driven identity crisis (the title refers to the country’s so-called “Celtic Tiger” boom period) The Tiger’s Tail is apt enough, but Boorman makes it difficult to take the underlying meaning seriously. The miscalculations just keep piling up: O’Leary’s slip through the cracks smacks of contrivance and the scene where his frigid wife (Kim Cattrall, avec Irish accent) is basically raped by her husband’s double to ecstatic effect is both ridiculous and rather objectionable.