Movie Review 'The November Man': Nothing but a Bond nostalgia trip
Update: 2014-08-29 11:28 GMT
The November Man
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Olga Kurylenko, Luke Bracey
Rating: 2 stars
There couldn’t have been a greater allusion to the Bond franchise than the recently released The November Man. For starters, a former Bond (Brosnan in GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough) plays an ex-CIA agent who comes back into the spy arena to protect a former Bond Girl (Kurylenko in Quantum of Solace) and where does the film open? Montenegro. Yes that idyllic place that saw Daniel Craig as Bond kick some serious butt in Casino Royale. Sadly the film seems like nothing more than a Bond nostalgia trip organised for a former Bond to satisfy himself and project his inner spy instincts. It takes one all of 10 minutes for one to see how the film would actually play out like a much smaller and less megalomaniacal version of a Salman Khan flick.
Peter “The November Man” Devereaux (Brosnan) is a skilled and rather deadly ex-CIA agent, who has been enjoying a quiet life in Switzerland. Ya right, how long do those last? Especially since “The November Man” — called so because apparently when he arrives, nothing is left alive — is just too well trained an agent to be off the field for too long. Devereaux is lured out of retirement for one last mission by a friend John Hanley (Bill Smitrovich) to protect valuable witness Alice Fournier (Kurylenko) who has the potential to ruin things for a Russian Presidential candidate. Of course, as is the case with simplistic and predictable plotlines that are synonymous with such flicks, there’s more to this than meets the end. Devereaux discovers that his CIA protégé has been given the orders to eliminate him because the former is apparently sitting on a lot of sensitive information about the Chechen War — a war that was conspired by the CIA and resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. The flippancy with which some of this info is accessed is as childish as the twists and turns of the Akshay Kumar-starrer Ajnabee. But then, this was going to a Brosnan fest anyway so everything else is incidental.
With growing suspicions of a mole in the agency, Devereaux realises that there’s no one he can trust, no rules that are too stringent and nothing that will stop him. The earnestness with which Brosnan pulls off the role is commendable. Yet one cannot help but feel the film was just too dated in terms of plot and the need to subscribe to a persona-driven concept. There are crazy car chases and a mounting body count, but there’s just not much else to it barring those. Kurylenko, not one of the more sexy Bond Girls, is tough with the occasional skin show but brings littler to the table than she did in Quantum.
The film lacks the pace of a movie of this genre and there are times when one wonders if it was better to have just watched re-runs of old spy flicks. For worshippers of Brosnan, this is a mega show. For those who like to watch a good film, this is a no-go. Don’t waste your time on it.
The official trailer of the film