The November Man (2014)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

The Worst Film Ever

Excellent but underrated film

The acting in this movie is really good.

You can generally tell how closely an action movie adhered to generic conventions by how long it takes to get to the first high-speed pursuit. The car chase here begins at about the twenty minute mark. Strictly routine.Pierce Brosnan is a retired CIA agent who is called back to duty by his nationalist fervor and his high moral sense. Another CIA agent, by whom Brosnan has had a daughter, has been uncovered by the Russkies and must be saved. Brosnan doesn't succeed in his mission. The woman is seated next to him in a car when her chest is punctured by a bullet from a distant rifle. The man who fired the bullet is Luke Bracey, a young CIA man who is just following orders and who was trained to do so by Brosnan in his earlier incarnation.A feud now exists between them. It's cat and mouse. It's eye for eye. It's tooth for tooth. It's quid for quo. It's two for a penny.The feud adds tension but the tension is misplaced because the REAL villains aren't those whom you might expect. I won't give away their identities except to say that one is Bill Smitrovich, the CIA chief in Belgrade, where the story takes place; the other is Lazar Ristovski, a candidate for president of the Russian confederation. They get their just desserts.The principals in the movie stay in the elegant Hotel Imperial in Belgrade. I stayed in Belgrade for a while, too, but in the cheapest shabbiest hotel I could find. I developed these tiny red lesions which my companion, a medical student, claimed looked like insect bites. One night, in the course of rolling over, I happened to glance at the pillow where half a dozen bed bugs had nestled under my head. Now, I don't just offer this as a colorful anecdote but as a prelude to some advice of momentous importance: If you must stay in Belgrade, stay in the Hotel Imperial.Brosnan is okay, and Olga Kurylenko is positively magnetic, what with her plump lips and startling periwinkle blue irises. Luke Bracey is a good-enough looking young man. He looks like a movie star. But his delivery is pale and weak. Lazar Ristovski does a good job as the corrupt sex maniac who starts the Chechin War. Smitrovich is so repulsive in every respect that he, or his bald presence, seems to infect the screen. Amila Terzimehic is a hit woman who has had ballet training and whose nose is as long and threatening as her pistol, the one with the lengthy noise suppressor attached. It's confusing, filled with action, and violently routine.

It met slightly my expectations.The pace was good and there was enough suspense to keep my attention high. The story was not complicated and the performance of ex-James Bond Pierce Brosnan was fresh and respectable.The filming locations with Lausanne, Montenegro or Moscow gave this spy thriller a serious touch. In other words, if you have nothing special to do one evening this one is the perfect entertaining action movie. But it's not worth to see it again or hold it for example in my best of DVD collection.See therefore the trilogy of Taken or the Bourne series.Solid 6/10.

A good spy action flick. The strength of The November Man is in its twist-filled plot. There is more double- and triple- crossing than I've seen in a long while. I lose count, but there may even have been a quadruple-crossing at the very end.Sadly the acting is not great. Pierce Brosnan was a great spy when he was a suave James Bond armed with martinis and gadget-filled cars, but when he's asked (as here in the character of Devereux) to be gritty, ruthless and hands-on, he can't pull it off.The bad guys aren't particularly memorable either, cover the full range of stereotypes from Russian politicos to emotionless assassins.Then there's Mason played by Luke Bracey, who is supposedly Debereux's protégé but is repeatedly and effortlessly outwitted by him. Olga Kurylenko probably put in the best performance of the film, as Alice, the social worker with a mysterious past.However I do like a good plot and The November Man certainly provided that. A movie you can happily wile away an evening with and most likely will have forgotten about a month later.

I decided to watch this movie not knowing it was based on a novel, haven't read the novel either so don't know if it did justice to the film or not.Coming to the film,was expecting a good movie since it casts Pierce Brosnan as a an American spy.The beginning of the movie seemed interesting, have always liked Pierce Brosnan in the role of a spy. Devereaux (Pirce Brosnan) was a character i couldn't understand, sometimes he acts just like he should, an intelligent spy with amazing skills, can handle tough situation easily, and then sometimes he acts just the opposite making naive mistakes. The story was confusing with lots of loopholes. So in the movie, CIA roams freely in Russia and there are no police. It felt like it was an American territory where Russian police or intelligence had no hold. You can enter a hotel and easily get to the upcoming president of Russia, CIA can do whatever it wants and the world would believe a Chechnyan girl who was physically abused by the antagonist via a email and lastly the Americans would want this girl who had proof even its agents had a hand in starting a war.My score - at best 5.5 The soundtrack was nothing spectacular.