Review: The November Man

The specter of his Bond past hangs over the proceedings of Pierce Brosnan's latest flick The November Man. Boiled down to its essence, this is a story of a man with a license to kill.

Certainly it's not difficult to imagine Brosnan's CIA operative Peter Devereaux as Bond nearing his twilight years. Retired to a quiet life in Switzerland after a mission gone awry in Montenegro five years earlier, Devereaux suddenly finds himself re-activated by former handler John Hanley (Bill Smitrovich). The mission: go to Belgrade and extract his former lover and now deep cover Russian CIA operative Natalia Ulanova (Mediha Musliovic), who has the name of a witness who can link presidential candidate Arkady Fedorov (Lazar Ristovski) to war crimes.

Predictably, the mission doesn't go well. Believing that her cover is blown, a second extraction team led by Devereaux's former protege David Mason (Luke Bracey) shoots Natalia; she manages to impart the name - Mira Filipova - to Devereaux before she dies. The rest of the movie is a cat and mouse affair between Devereaux and Mason as they try to take each other out.

Based on Bill Granger's The November Man series of books, the film posits itself as a potential franchise (there's already a sequel in the works) for Brosnan, who puts a darker spin on his Bond schtick; it's hard to imagine this series having any sort of longevity as the whole enterprise is serviceable at best. Then again so do the Taken films, which have a third installment set for release in 2015, so there may be hope here if it finds a wide enough audience and turns a tidy profit.

Director Roger Donaldson seems a solid choice for the material given his experience in twisty political thrillers (1987's No Way Out - still worth a watch after all these years) and actioners (The Italian Job), yet his execution is workmanlike and he certainly does nothing to overcome Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek's cliche-ridden screenplay. Characters are broadly sketched, the dialogue is near laughable. The dynamic between Deveraux and Mason, arguably the meat of the movie, is let down by Bracey who doesn't so much run the gamut from A to Z as remain stalled in A.

The November Man works best when you don't concern yourself with plot, characterization and all the story's accompanying folderol. Simply sit back and enjoy Brosnan's undimmed charisma and luxuriate in the infinite loveliness of his co-star, former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko.

The November Man

Directed by: Roger Donaldson

Written by: Michael Finch, Karl Gajdusek; adapted from Bill Granger's novel There Are No Spies

Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Olga Kurylenko, Luke Bracey, Bill Smitrovich, Lazar Ristovski, Will Patton, Mediha Musliovic, Caterina Scorsone