Review: The November Man

As we open, Pierce Brosnan is CIA man whose attempt at mentoring Luke Bracey hits a snag when Bracey’s firing of a gun during an assassination attempt on an Ambassador results in the death of a kid. Brosnan admonishes the young upstart for refusing to listen to an order. Several years later and Brosnan is out of the CIA, but his former boss Bill Smitrovich calls in a favour, asking him to see to the protection of a Russian spy set to defect to the US with saucy information on the guy next expected to become the Russian President. The female Russian spy, by the way, is Brosnan’s ex-lover. Unfortunately, the spy gets taken out by Bracey on orders by the new CIA head, played by Will Patton. Olga Kurylenko plays a Belgrade social worker who knows the identity of a key person (a Chechen refugee) who can put the Putin-wannabe in the shitter. Eliza Taylor has a small role as Bracey’s neighbour, who clearly wants to get into his pants. Both women get caught in the middle of the penis-measuring contest between Brosnan and Bracey, master and student.

 

Reminding everyone that he’s by far the second-best Bond (behind Sean Connery, of course), Pierce Brosnan also shows in this 2014 action-thriller that he can do Daniel Craig’s 007 much more interestingly than Craig himself. Directed by Aussie journeyman Roger Donaldson (“No Way Out”, “Cocktail”, “The Recruit”, “The Bank Job”) it’s a well-directed and nice-looking genre film, even if the cinematography by Romain Lacourbas (“Taken 2”) is a tad jittery for my liking. Scripted by Michael Finch (co-writer of “Predators”) & Karl Gajdusek (“Oblivion”, the Nic Cage flop “Trespass”), it’s B-movie material with an A-list lead, but to be honest I actually think it’s better than the best of Daniel Craig’s Bond films, “Skyfall” (which was almost a good movie).

 

Although he seems better suited to work for MI5 than the CIA, Brosnan is as good as he damn well always is. I was particularly partial to his character’s dark, remorseless side here, even though he’s quite clearly the good guy. This character is definitely closer to Jack Bauer than Brosnan’s streamlined, efficient version of 007, and Brosnan is more than up to the task. This guy is really fucking harsh and uncompromising in achieving his mission. The film also contains TV character actor Bill Smitrovich’s best work since “The Practice”, and Olga Kurylenko is pretty decent too. She’s getting a lot better at speaking English expressively, so it’s a shame Hollywood has already forgotten her somewhat. She wears a black dress at one point that makes her so sexy that she might just be lethal. Faring less successfully, Aussie TV’s favourite teenage bogan, Eliza Taylor has lost the ‘Cotter’, and isn’t really in the film much, fans are better off watching that sci-fi show she and fellow former Aussie soap actor Bob Morley are on (Can’t remember the name, I don’t watch it. Don’t care to look it up). Will Patton is a face I haven’t seen in a long time for some reason, but he’s here and has a toupee that makes him look alarmingly like Scottish actor Peter Mullan.

 

A good but not great film, it’s an easy watch, if not the most surprising story in the world and it moves at a good clip. The only thing that really bothered me was that Luke Bracey’s cocky upstart character’s vendetta against Brosnan seems to have very little motivation. What we see in the opening scene just doesn’t seem like enough of a reason to me. Their beef just seems ridiculous. I also have to take Finch and Gajdusek over the coals for featuring one of those pretentious scenes where the title gets explained. The worst thing? The explanation really needs an explanation itself!

 

Definitely one of Donaldson’s better efforts, this one deserved a better fate on original release (It went direct-to-DVD in Australia for some reason, despite an Aussie director and former Aussie soap stars Luke Bracey and Eliza Taylor in important roles). If you like Bond and TV’s “24”, this is like a mixture of the two, and worth a look.

 

Rating: B-