John Boorman’s buoyant black comedy The Tiger’s Tail tells a Prince and the Pauper story of twins separated at birth who meet for the first time and find brotherly love isn’t all its craic’ed up to be.

Liam O’Leary (Brendan Gleeson) is a self-made millionaire thanks to Ireland’s booming economy. He has a beautiful wife Jane (Kim Cattrall), an intelligent son, Connor (Brian Gleeson), a big house and a few entrepreneurial awards on his mantelpiece.

Until one night stuck in traffic Liam sees himself cleaning his own car windscreen.

No one will believe the mysterious man Liam later catches peering through his living room window even exists, let alone that he smashed him over the head with a bottle in a nightclub toilet.

The Doppelganger eventually unveils himself as Liam’s identical twin, lures him out to the countryside and sets about stealing his identity.

Comic licence is stretched to its limit as the ‘evil’ twin returns to the nest to claim the family and wealth that could have been his. Meanwhile a number of unlikely scenarios render Liam unable to reach his family before his wife is successfully convinced she prefers this version of her husband to the former.

Boorman weaves light-hearted social commentary into a script. Liam ends up in a homeless shelter and a psychiatric hospital; the city is littered with drunken brawls and teenagers vomiting against lamp posts and abuse by the Catholic Church rears its ugly head. Boorman wants us to know the luck of the Oirish only graces a privileged few and shows the ease in which the ‘haves’ can become the ‘have nots’.

Although there’s no intention of browbeating us into political activism The Tiger’s Tail’s works better as a light-hearted critique on the current state of Irish society than the nature of identity.

While Gleeson manages to pull off his two roles by never leaving us in any doubt as to which ‘Liam’ we are watching, there are too many contrived coincidences that keep Liam out of the picture long enough for his double to seduce his family.

Cattrall let’s the side down with a fluctuating accent and her unconvincing acceptance of another man taking her husband’s place. Jodie Foster in Sommersby she’s not and Cattrall turns out to be as fickle as her character in Sex in the City.

The Tiger's Tail opens in the UK on 18 May 2007

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