Movie Review: The November Man

Roger Donaldson (Cocktail) brings us this September action/spy thriller, The November Man.


Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan, The Matador) is a CIA agent who retires after his protégé, Mason (Luke Bracey, G.I. Joe: Retaliation) fails to follow an order and things go wrong on a mission.  He has five years of peace before his former boss, Hanley (Bill Smitrovich, Iron Man) calls him back to pull another agent out of deep cover in Russia.  This agent has information on a man trying for the Russian presidency that the CIA needs, and Hanley claims they will only talk to Peter.  Things go wrong again.  The CIA and Russians are both after Peter.  He runs into his old protégé.  Bad guys are good guys, good guys are bad guys.  Who does he trust?  There's a girl they are seeking who was abused by the bad Russian man.  There's a Chechen war that was started on purpose for control of oil.  Ya follow?  Good.


Yeah, let's start with the plot.  It was all over the place, and just about as easy to follow as my description above.  There were just so many plot points crammed into this movie, and the screenwriter tried to put too many twists into it.  This film ran a fairly short 108 minutes, and yet it felt like it was at least 2 hours long.  I will give credit to the fact that despite the jumbled mess of a story, it did all clear up by the end.  It also felt like even with all that was going on, the movie was still a little clichéd and predictable at some points.  There's the retired agent who is pulled back in and has to face his protégé.  There's the obligatory meeting with an informant in a strip club.  There are two-faced characters who are not really who they seem to be.  There was simply just not much in here that set this movie apart from any other generic CIA spy movie like this.


The acting wasn't bad, but it wasn't real great either.  For the most part I don't entirely fault the actors.  They all did a competent job with what they were given.  All the characters were just so by the numbers that there was no room for them to shine.  Brosnan was the only one who had anything to even remotely sink his teeth into and did a fine job.  He plays a man who wants to stay settled down and run his little shop, but in a few scenes you get to see a little bit of the darkness from his past come through and you're not quite sure if he's going to step over the edge.


There's not much else to say about this film.  It's not really bad, and it's not really good.  It just kind of......is.  It's Pierce Brosnan back in the role of a spy, which is a good thing.  There's enough action to keep you interested.  It's the kind of movie you'll find on TBS or TNT, while flipping through your 10,000 cable channels, that you'll stop and watch when you realize there is nothing else on.  You'll enjoy it for what it is, then forget about it month later.


Rating: ****------ (4 out of 10)


Memorable Quote:
Alice: Do all your friends try to kill you?
Peter: Eventually.