The November Man

The November Man (2014)

36% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 98 reviews)

Runtime: 108 minutes

Directed by: Roger Donaldson

Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey, Olga Kurylenko, Bill Smitrovich, Amila Terzimehic

From: Relativity Media

Yep, I decided to return to the cinema and I had the choice of a few movies but I decided upon this one, despite the mixed reaction it's gotten. The IMDb plot description then what I said about it on Letterboxd:

“An ex-CIA operative is brought back in on a very personal mission and finds himself pitted against his former pupil in a deadly game involving high level CIA officials and the Russian president-elect.” That's pretty much what was said in the trailers.

As I've mentioned before, this year in movies hasn't really lit my world on fire. That's just my opinion. There's been some great ones but those seem few and far between. I'll just hope that business picks up the last few months of the year. Then again I am one who typically would rather see the movies that come out not during the summer blockbuster season, as most of those blockbusters just do nothing for me at best. I'd rather see films like this; I knew this had a real mixed reception so I figured it wouldn't be on my Top 10 list by the end of the year but I still wanted to be entertained and the trailer made it look interesting.

After seeing it, I'll have to side with those that liked it. I'll admit that the story is kind of ridiculous overall, there's nothing that'll knock your socks off and if I saw more of these modern spy films I'd recognize the cliches that others have noted. Even with all that, I was simply entertained by this story of an old grizzled spy who had to go against a “young buck” he used to work with, and Olga Kurylenko is involved too in a tale involving the current hot button topic of Russia and government corruption. I'll admit the story isn't complex but I was OK with that as it's preferable to a overly convoluted mess of a story that gives you a headache trying to figure it all out.

What helped was that the performances were nice all around, especially from the leads in Brosnan, Bracey and Kurylenko, Belgrade, Serbia was a city I wasn't used to seeing on the big screen so I thought that was nice, there were quality R-rated action (thankfully filmed in a manner where you could comprehend all the action scenes, something that unfortunately isn't always seen these days) and I was just entertained throughout.

Pierce as Peter Deveraux reminded me of another older spy, Bryan Mills of Taken fame (Taken 2 never happened in my alternate universe) in several ways, including doing things you wouldn't suspect a “hero” to do but as he's a hard-edged spy that's supposed to be emotionless, he does some harsh things to try and stop the conflict or get information out of someone.

Speaking of being reminded of other things, with the Eastern European setting and the government corruption theme, my mind went to the infamous Steven Seagal and all those direct to DVD movies he's done in the past 10 or so years from that part of the world. I've never seen any of them but from what I've heard those plots are overwrought and are just about inscrutable even if you've seen it more than once. I was thankful this did not go that route.

Overall, while the story is not revolutionary in any way, if you want to see an entertaining spy tale from a veteran director and featuring an aging but still capable star as the lead, then this will fit the bill.

I'll return tomorrow night.