By Jeremy Hannaford (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: September 10, 2014
It has been over 12 years since Pierce Brosnan last portrayed the coveted character of James Bond, and his return to the world of action and espionage was certainly anticipated. With Roger Donaldson (The Bank Job) in the director’s chair, it looked like this could be something worthwhile. However, November Man suffers from a bland script trying to overcomplicate itself.
The premise of November Man is that Brosnan’s character, Peter Devereaux, is a veteran CIA agent gone rogue in an effort to uncover a conspiracy about a rising Russian presidential candidate. At the same time, he is caught in a game of cat-and-mouse with his former pupil as they both seek to uncover the truth. If you recognize that synopsis, it’s because you’ve seen it before many times.
This film is another victim of having an eye-catching trailer that terribly misrepresents the entire movie; having a guy jumping through a doorway firing a gun in slow motion while Brosnan provides an impressive voiceover about the power of a bullet was a great marketing ploy. Too bad both the stunt and the speech are completely irrelevant to the rest of the film.
The script plays out like a straight-to-DVD action spy film with a number of clichés and customary plot twists. There are many moments that reflect other action films — films that were also weighed down with faults. The story tries to overcomplicate itself in the same sense that Brian de Palma’s Mission Impossible did. There are so many plot points that come and go that it leaves little room to comprehend what transpires. Characters are introduced and killed off before their relevance begins to appear. And the characters we do get to know are so generic that the audience has no reason to care about them.
Even Brosnan is a victim of this. His character is an attempt at a more hardened and violent version of his James Bond character, but this film can’t decide whether to set him up as an anti-hero bent on vengeance or a man who just seems to be angry all the time. He spends more screen time yelling at people and drinking hotel booze than actually advancing the story. And when he does push the narrative forward, he appears without any explanation of his arrival in that plot point location.
But at least he has some emotional development — unlike co-star Luke Bracey, who gives a terribly bland performance as Brosnan’s former pupil. He follows the action with the same dull facial expression and doesn’t compare in the slightest with Brosnan. Even in the moments where they are exchanging cliché banter in an attempt to razz each other, at least Brosnan is trying to make something of it. Bracey just comes off as a one-note robot.
The real performance from this movie is that of Olga Kurylenko. While her performance isn’t a powerhouse, her plotline is really the only one you may actually care about. Though it is still a bit cliché, it’s compelling to watch her story unfold in the film’s climactic moments. But Kurylenko’s character isn’t truly introduced until nearly three-quarters of the way through the film, which ultimately fizzles the spark her character could have had.
There are some other positive points to this film. The action is consistent, and some of the sequences are set up very well. A few action scenes are filmed with a serene sense of clarity and are edited well. November Man’s action scenes are strong, and there is some good filmmaking. It’s frustrating to think what could have been done if the rest of the film had been similar to these scenes.
November Man tries to be too many things at once, and it suffers from it. Cat-and-mouse games, numerous plot twists, and a teacher/pupil rivalry are all components that have been used in much better action movies. If you are to run with an overdone premise, you must have a creative edge to make it memorable; otherwise it will be added to the list of pointless action movies. Sad to say, to quote Brosnan himself, November Man will “cease to exist” from memory come late fall.
