There's little to be gained from bleating on about the similarity between John Boorman's adaptation of John Le Carr's The Tailor of Panama, and Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, writes David Parkinson.

Le Carr has practised no deception - he acknowledges his debt in the book. But there seems to so much intellectual hypocrisy about fictional originality. Films clef (in which biography is lightly disguised as fiction), Warhol's pop artistic makeovers of other people's photographs, musical sampling and US remakes of French movies have all been accepted on their own merits for donkeys years.

Yet literary homage is still instantly denounced as plagiarism. Ideas should never become just another convenience commodity. But, then, neither should they be encased in alarmed cases for display only. Especially if they are to be reused in such an entertaining and enlightening way as this.

Don't misunderstand. The Tailor of Panama is not a particularly good picture. The narrative too often falls back on contrivance to relieve the strain on credibility. Boorman's direction is exceedingly old-fashioned and virtually the entire cast overacts in its eagerness to amuse. Yet this is a film that carries you along thanks to its refusal to dumb down a complex scenario and its total conviction in its increasingly preposterous ramifications.

Banished to Panama after a series of espionage blunders, Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) determines to rebuild his career by fair means or foul. Some judicious snooping brings him into contact with Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush), a similarly exiled rag trader, whose guilty secrets - a bankrupt farm, a wasted inheritance and an undisclosed jail term - are compounded by an inability to stick to facts.

Dishing out government largesse to loosen Pendel's already garrulous tongue, Osnard learns of the 'silent opposition', a band of anti-Noriega rebels, who are supposedly re-forming to seize control of the Panama Canal and expunge any lingering American influence. But even as the CIA prepares to mount an invasion, Harry's enjoyment of his new-found wealth and prestige blinds him to the danger in which he's placed his family.

Clearly encouraged to flirt with caricature, both Brosnan and Rush turn in creditable performances, with the former debunking his 007 persona and the latter rejoicing in his talent for eccentricity. Yet the arrant frivolity of their game-playing has a deleterious effect, as it both deflates the suspense and undermines any vestige of geopolitical comment. But then Greene, sorry Le Carr, only ever meant it to be an entertainment'.