Vitals

Pierce Brosnan as Mark Taffin, debt collector

Ballymoran, Ireland, Fall 1987

Film: Taffin
Release Date: February 26, 1988
Director: Francis Megahy
Costume Designer: Imogen Magnus

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

In the years between his career-defining roles as Remington Steele and James Bond, Pierce Brosnan’s career spanned a variety of roles, from classic adventurer Phileas Fogg in a TV production of Around the World in 80 Days to spurned lovers in Love Affair (1994) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)—losing his love interest to Warren Beatty (makes sense) and Robin Williams dressed as a fussy old British woman (oh!), respectively.

For the 00-7th of October today, let’s look at one of Brosnan’s more Bond-like roles during this period, portraying the title character in Taffin, adapted from Lyndon Mallet’s book series of the same name. Mallet reportedly balked at the casting choice as his literary Mark Taffin was described as overweight and unattractive—two words which would not describe Pierce Brosnan.

Taffin works as a debt collector in his small Irish hometown, filmed in County Wicklow, where his popularity ranges based on whether he’s helped you recover your debts… or had him knocking at your door on someone else’s behalf. Despite his cynical attitude and less-than-reputable profession, Taffin emerges as the town’s de facto defender, working against the developers who’ll stop at nothing to capitalize on the land.

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What’d He Wear?

Mark Taffin decorates his loft with outlaw imagery from a portrait of Johnny Cash to a High Noon poster, perhaps particularly relating to Gary Cooper’s character standing alone to defend his town—even after the town has forsaken him. He doesn’t quite model himself after a cowboy, though there’s a western-informed flair to his rotation of shirts worn with black jeans, boots, and a leather car coat in lieu of a gunfighter’s duster.

The U-Boat Coat

The weathered brown leather jacket follows the design of “U-boat coats” worn by German submarine commanders during World War II, as explored in an episode of Pete Brooker’s podcast From Tailors With Love. (In the context of Pierce Brosnan’s career arc, this coat somewhat foreshadows the similarly cut and colored leather jacket that his James Bond would wear during the action-packed pre-credits sequence of Tomorrow Never Dies.)

Given their shared naval origins and purpose, the U-boat coat shares several design elements with the classic pea jacket, including the ulster collar, pocket configuration, and thigh-length cut that keeps the wearer’s torso warm without compromising easy movement or storage amidst limited quarters at sea.

Kriegsmarine coats were often reinforced with yokes that varied in style from straight to pointed, with the cowboy-adjacent Taffin naturally preferring a model with western-style pointed yokes over the chest and back. The pair of handwarmer pockets are placed over the chest and accessed through wide, nearly vertical welted openings that align with each pointed front yoke, supplemented by the set-in hip pockets with straight, horizontal jetted entries.

Like pea jackets, U-boat coats were typically double-breasted; however, Taffin’s coat has a three-button closure that is technically single-breasted but with a fuller wrap that suggests a double-breasted jacket with the column of vestigial buttons removed. A half-belt hangs from the back of the waist, designed to be pulled around the front and buttoned closed as needed, echoed by the pointed sleeve tabs that close through one of two buttons to adjust the fit over each cuff.

The Shirts

Following his hero Cash’s famously darkened duds, Taffin is introduced as another “Man in Black”, sporting a pitch-black long-sleeved work shirt detailed with front placket, button cuffs, and two chest pockets that each close through a single-button flap.

The next of Taffin’s shirts is made from a tan cloth but similarly styled with point collar, two button-flapped chest pockets, button cuffs, a box-pleated back, and a front placket with brown buttons that get partially torn off when Charlotte (Alison Doody) undresses him in her room.

Evidently Taffin mends the buttons, as he later re-wears the shirt with a cool olive-brown checked wool sports coat that he later wears over the  blue denim Levi’s trucker jacket to be featured later! Checked in a dark-navy and muted rust, this three-button jacket has fashionably wide padded shoulders, a welted breast pocket, and narrow notch lapels that Taffin insouciantly wears with the collar turned up.

Taffin continues his pattern of work shirts by also wearing one made from light-blue chambray cotton, styled with a point collar, front placket, and two patch pockets—the left one has the usual single-button flap while the right one has an open top (or the flap is tucked in and button missing.) Taffin characteristically wears with the top few white two-hole buttons undone, and button-fastened cuffs that he also wears undone so he can roll his sleeves up his forearms.

Toward the end of Taffin, our hero graduates to more white shirts. For a jaunt to the strip club where Charlotte works to a shotgun-toting confrontation in the woods, Taffin’s wrinkled white cotton shirt has off-white buttons up the front placket and his usual chest pockets covered with single-button pointed flaps.

During a moment of hillside repose with Charlotte, Taffin wears a dressier white cotton poplin shirt with a semi-spread collar, front placket, button cuffs, and no pockets—likely the same shirt he wears during one of the few moments that actually calls for him to wear a tie.

Everything Else

Taffin tucks all of these shirts into black denim cotton Levi’s jeans, cut slim through the legs and styled with the requisite belt loops and five-pocket layout—identifiable by the brand’s signature red tab on the back-right patch pocket. He holds the jeans up with a narrow dark-brown leather belt, pulled through a silver-toned single-prong buckle but still so long that he usually has to loop the belt back under itself.

Taffin maintains the western influence on his style with hard-worn black leather cowboy boots, scuffed to a weathered patina that shows the cowhide’s natural brown shade under the burnished stress points. Rather than the more evocative winged bug-and-wrinkle stitching characteristic of cowboy boots, these feature two pairs of raised parallel lines stitched across each instep.

After debuting it during Brosnan’s famous “maybe you shouldn’t be living here!“ outburst to Charlotte, Taffin’s fuzzy black V-neck sweater reappears under his U-boat coat when he and Ed (Gerald McSorley) arrange Charlotte’s gambit with Gerald Martin (Jeremy Child) in his Rolls-Royce.

To further signal his detachment while barking at Charlotte, Taffin keeps wearing his tortoise-framed Persol Ratti Meflecto 69218 sunglasses even though he’s inside. Distinctive for their subtle cat-eye shape and thick arms, these shades were also famously worn by Don Johnson in Miami Vice and by Joe Pesci during a 1980s-set scene in Casino.

During a covert collection on a rainy day that results in Mr. Henderson (Liam O’Callaghan) firing a shotgun at him, Taffin layers on a black waxed three-button knee-length rain slicker and a Donegal tweed newsboy cap with colorful flecks woven in among the wide-scaled brown-and-black herringbone, though he loses the cap when scrambling away from Henderson’s barrage of buckshot.

Taffin briefly wears the coat pulled over his light-blue denim Levi’s “Type III” trucker jacket and a white cotton long-sleeved button-up shirt after leaving the club with Charlotte, encountering the goons who smash up both Taffin and his red Mustang convertible. Though the Type III dates to the 1960s, Taffin’s jacket would have been a more recent iteration as the handwarmer pockets weren’t added until 1984. He repeats this layering for the climactic scene where he attempts to get away in the same Mustang, though now layered over a simpler black T-shirt.

Statement Jewelry

Amidst his wavy coif, Taffin wears a small gold-toned hoop earring in his left ear. His open-neck shirts also prominently show what appears to be a light blue-filled silver religious medallion suspended from a short silver beaded necklace. He also wears a simply black cord bracelet braided around his right wrist.

Taffin credited its “alternative men’s jewelry” to Dion Dreyes, who may have provided most—if not all—of Brosnan’s screen-worn affectations. His trio of silver rings are all on the last two fingers of his right hand. He wears the largest of these on his ring finger, flaring out to a squared face with two stars in relief against a wavy turquoise plate, with “76” imprinted on one side. On the inside of his pinky, he wears a carved silver band with a blue inset stone, topped with a twisted silver band.

Sandwiched between the luxury Cartier and Omega wristwatches he wore as Remington Steele and James Bond, respectively, Mark Taffin prefers a more subdued timepiece consistent with his blend of wartime and western-informed style. The watch itself appears to be vintage, with a yellow-gold plated stainless steel case and beige dial with gold hands.

He secures it to a black leather Bund strap, a cuff-style bracelet developed for military pilots in Bundesrepublik (West Germany) that flew onto civilians’ wrists to appropriate a rough-edged “bad boy” image as exemplified on- and off-screen by Steve McQueen’s Hanhart chronograph, Robert Redford’s Doxa in Three Days of the Condor, and Barry Newman in Vanishing Point. Taffin’s Bund strap contextually harmonizes with his U-boat coat as an appropriation of German military styles.

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The Car

Taffin’s bright-red 1971 Ford Mustang convertible stands out among the greenery of Ballymoran. (An IMCDB commenter tracking the registration plates cited it was a 1973 Mustang, though at least the front grille of the screen-used Mustang is decidedly a ’71 model.)

The 1971 model year marked the fourth and final facelift within what is known as the first generation of the iconic Ford Mustang pony car, which had been introduced to great fanfare seven years earlier with the 1964½ model. The ’71 redesign continued the heftier muscle car-influenced styling of the previous iteration, now even wider to accommodate high-performance engines like the big-block 429 cubic-inch Cobra Jet V8 series.

On the other end of the performance spectrum from the 429 V8s pushing over 370 horsepower, a 250 cubic-inch (4.1L) “Thriftpower” L-code inline-six was still the base engine, followed by small-block V8s like the F-code 302 Windsor V8 and a trio of 351 V8s that varied in output based on carburetor options.

Taffin never takes us under the hood of its titular character’s Mustang, nor is it externally badged to identify its engine, so we can only speculate beyond seeing that he clearly drives one equipped with the three-speed Cruise-O-Matic automatic transmission. The same IMCDB comment that followed the registration to identify it as a red 1973 model curiously makes reference to a “4.5L” engine, which wouldn’t have existed between the 4.1L inline-six or the 4.9L/302 Windsor V8. Assuming “4.5L” was a clerical error referring to one of these, we can assume Taffin would prefer the V8, right?

1971 Ford Mustang

Body Style: 2-door convertible

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 302 cu. in. (4.9 L) Ford “Windsor” (F-code) V8 with Motorcraft 2-barrel carburetor

Power: 210 hp (156.5 kW; 213 PS) @ 4600 RPM

Torque: 296 lb·ft (401 N·m) @ 2600 RPM

Transmission: 3-speed Cruise-O-Matic automatic transmission

Wheelbase: 109 inches (2769 mm)

Length: 189.5 inches (4813 mm)

Width: 74.1 inches (1882 mm)

Height: 50.5 inches (1283 mm)

In addition to his head-turning Mustang, Taffin has the restaurant owner O’Malley (Peter Caffrey) sign over his new red Rover 820Si sedan to him as collateral until he can repay Taffin’s client.

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The Gun

Taffin lures the ruthless chemical plant developer Conway (Jim Bartley) out to a remote cabin, where he was waiting for him with a pistol-gripped, pump-action shotgun. The blued steel shotgun has a shortened barrel with a vent rib along the top, just a few inches longer than the under-barrel magazine tube. The stock has been replaced with a tactical pistol grip, made from a black synthetic material to match the slide. The receiver has an ejection port on the right side, and a cross-bolt safety is positioned over the front of the trigger guard.

This configuration most closely resembles the Maverick Model 88, an affordable alternative to the Mossberg 500 that O.F. Mossberg & Sons introduced in 1988, chambered for 12- and 20-gauge shells. Given that Taffin was released in February 1988, it’s hard to believe that a brand-new budget shotgun would have been shipped from Texas to Ireland for its fleeting use on screen… but stranger things have happened.

Later, Taffin produces a blued steel Browning Hi-Power from under the driver’s seat of his Mustang—also holding this one on Conway. Originally designed by John M. Browning, this single-action pistol was finally completed by Dieudonné Saive at Fabrique Nationale (FN) Herstal in 1935. Its 13-round magazine loaded with 9x19mm Parabellum ammunition was an uncommonly large capacity for the era, resulting in its “Hi-Power” nomenclature. During World War II, it was produced for both Allied and Axis forces, with FN’s Belgian plant under Nazi control and a parallel line established by Inglis in Canada, though it went on to be adopted by more than fifty militaries around the world.

Both Belgian-made FN and Canadian-made Inglis Hi-Powers were issued as the L9A1 service pistol to Commonwealth armed forces and the Irish Defence Forces through most of the 20th century, so it makes sense that Taffin would have had access to one.

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What to Imbibe

Consistent with his Irish heritage and the setting, Taffin typically drinks Guinness Extra Stout—whether it’s a draft poured by Charlotte in the pool room or bottles enjoyed at home.

When the situation calls for something harder, Taffin prefers Macallan single-malt Scotch whisky, whether that’s enjoying a dram neat with Gerald Martin during the final act or pour some into his and Charlotte’s tea while they’re in bed together.

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How to Get the Look

As his town’s resident tough guy, Mark Taffin blends wartime and western-informed styles to maintain his image: a rotation of simple shirts tucked into black jeans and cowboy boots, silver-and-tortoise statement rings on one hand and a wristwatch Bund-strapped to the other, all anchored by a weathered brown leather U-boat coat.

• Brown leather U-boat coat with ulster collar, three-button front, handwarmer pockets, straight jetted hip pockets, belted back, and adjustable tab cuffs
• Black, tan, light-blue, or white cotton long-sleeved work-shirt with point collar, two chest pockets (with single-button flaps), and button cuffs
• Black denim slim-fit Levi’s jeans
• Dark-brown leather belt with silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Black leather cowboy boots
• Gold mini-hoop earring
• Three silver-toned statement rings
• Black braided cord bracelet
• Gold-toned vintage wristwatch on black leather Bund strap
• Persol Ratti Meflecto 69218 tortoise-framed sunglasses

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, and be cool, BAMF Style readers. Be cool.

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The Quote

Of course I’m threatening you, you silly old sod, has it just sunk in? God, I must be slipping.