Take a look at any given poll concerning which actor has portrayed the best on-screen James Bond and it’s almost a certainty that Sean Connery will emerge as the number one choice each and every time. The number two spot, however, is usually up for grabs and depends heavily on the age of the voters.
Take, for instance, a 2012 Economist/YouGov poll in which readers were offered the choice of five different Bonds. Once the results were tallied, Pierce Brosnan came in a solid second as the best 007 for those between the ages of 30 and 44. That’s good news for the makers of “The November Man” as that older demographic is the one to which their film will most likely appeal.
“The November Man” feels oddly old fashioned. No doubt, part of the reason for this is due to the presence of Pierce Brosnan, who returns once again to the role of a spy. This time around, he plays ex-CIA operative Peter Devereaux, one of the agency’s top operatives who chooses to retire after his protégé, David Mason (Luke Bracey), disobeys orders and accidently shoots an innocent child dead. As is often the case in these stories, however, circumstances soon draw Devereaux back into the game.
Tipped off by an old colleague that his former lover Natalia is in mortal danger, Devereaux clandestinely attempts to extract the woman from the clutches of a dangerous Russian general turned potential president. Yes, just as in real life, the Russians are back as the bad guys. “The November Man” is a loose adaptation of Bill Granger’s 1987 novel, “There Are No Spies,” and, despite the movie’s modern setting, the film feels very much like a story from the Cold War era the book was written in.
Devereaux almost succeeds with his mission, but when the Russians determine what is going on, the CIA mysteriously orders Mason to assassinate Natalia. Before she dies, however, Natalia gives Devereaux the name of a missing woman who holds information that could bring down not only the Russian general, but others on the American side as well.
The possession of this knowledge marks Devereaux as a target not only by the Russians, but by the CIA as well, who naturally send Mason to find and kill his old mentor. If the setup involving a legendary agent being pitted against his one-time student seems somewhat familiar, it’s because it’s something of a rehash of the central conflict in “GoldenEye,” the first James Bond to feature Brosnan as super spy.
That underlying current of “been here, done that” permeates the whole of “The November Man.” That’s not to say the movie is overly dull. Director Roger Donaldson is no newbie to the spy thriller, and he directs the movie with efficiency, if not too much flare. In a nod to the aesthetic changes brought to the spy genre by the Bourne franchise, the firefights and fisticuffs in the film are quick and brutal, though Donaldson can’t resist a few instances of Matrix-style bullet-time when someone is about to land a particularly hard punch.
The script by Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek also does its best to keep things interesting. Befitting a spy movie, there are plenty of twists and turns, with characters flipping sides at a moment’s notice. And yet, even there, it’s hard not to feel as if you’ve seen it all before. None of the twists are all that startling.
What saves the movie is the acting. Filled mostly by TV veterans and non-American actors (a growing trend in Hollywood to help keep budgets under control), the cast turns in solid performances all around. Besides the aforementioned Bracy, there are good performances from Bill Smitrovich as Devereaux’s former boss and Lazar Ristovski as the Putin-esque Russian general. Olga Kurylenko, herself a one-time Bond girl, is particularly nice as the social worker who aids Devereaux in trying to find the missing woman.
Make no mistake, though, the movie belongs to Brosnan. He admits freely in interviews that the character of Devereaux is an opportunity to explore aspects of the Bond mythos which he wasn’t allowed to back in the day. In “The November Man” we see how a career devoted to killing, even in the name of one’s country, can leave a man hollow and cynical. Brosnan’s Devereaux is a much more brutal and darker character than the cinematic Bond has been shown to be. And yet, even as he has dutifully carried out his orders over the years, we learn that Devereaux has kept a closely guarded secret, something which has helped him retain his humanity amidst all the death and darkness.
It’s hard not to see a little of Brosnan’s personal life creeping into the role of Devereaux. During the filming of “The November Man,” Brosnan experienced the well-publicized death of his daughter due to ovarian cancer, the same disease which had previously taken his wife. One can only imagine the darkness that tugged at the actor’s soul during that time.
But as Brosnan explained in an interview with The Christian Post, “It always helps to have a bit of prayer in your back pocket. At the end of the day, you have to have something and for me that is God, Jesus, my Catholic upbringing, my faith… God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear. It is a constant, the language of prayer… I might not have got my sums right from the Christian Brothers or might not have got the greatest learning of literature from them but I certainly got a strapping amount of faith.”
Intentional or not, that notion of the suffering man with a bit of a prayer in his back pocket comes through in Brosnan’s performance in “The November Man,” and it helps slightly elevate what is an otherwise average action flick. At least it does for this old man for whom the movie is aimed anyway.
In a world he didn’t create, in a time he didn’t choose, one man looks for signs of God in the world by… watching movies. When he’s not reviewing new releases for Aleteia, David Ives spends his time exploring the intersection of low-budget/cult cinema and Catholicism at The B-Movie Catechism.
And today we celebrate...