{"id":3501,"date":"2014-08-29T05:02:56","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T12:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2014-08-29T05:03:18","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T12:03:18","slug":"review-the-november-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=3501","title":{"rendered":"Review: THE NOVEMBER MAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>Bang! You\u2019re dead. Bang! You\u2019re dead too. Bop! Another one knocked cold. Car chase. Bang! Bang! Bang! Another three dead. Foot chase. Bop! Bop! Bop! Three more fall into a heap along the marbled corridor of a high end hotel. Crash! A sinister Mercedes SUV, black, of course, drives recklessly through a crowded street clearing its way without regard for innocents. Bang! Bang! You get the idea\u2026<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what it\u2019s like watching \u201cThe November Man,\u201d a film that has very few momentary respites that punctuate the mindless action. And when there is a pause, Pierce Brosnan gets to swill down glass after glass of Scotch whisky. He\u2019s fit enough for a 60-plus-year-old and cool, to be sure, but he\u2019s no Liam Neeson. And \u201cThe November Man\u201d is no \u201cTaken.\u201d<\/p>\n

An espionage thriller vehicle for once Bond Brosnan, \u201cThe November Man\u201d tries hard but never distinguishes itself and worst of all, it gets monotonous and even boring as it repeats its sometimes senseless, violent gun play and grinds to a blood and bullets conclusion. Best line, not from Brosnan, \u201cYou know why we call you the November Man?\u201d Well, I won\u2019t spoil it, but the punch line is buried and comes way too late in the whole affair.<\/p>\n

Brosnan plays Devereaux, a shadowy CIA operative (sporting his smooth Irish accent), who prides himself on having no personal connections. At one point at the beginning of the film, he\u2019s joined by a U.S. diplomat in a sleek sedan. \u201cI need your clothes,\u201d he tells the diplomat. Naturally, they fit like a glove, because moments later Devereaux emerges from the vehicle suited up nicely. His callous commitment to no family or personal connections allows him to get the job done with little complications. He pulls triggers, and in \u201cThe November Man\u201d Devereaux never misses his mark. But after a job gone bad (due his young partner\u2019s failure to follow orders), he retires. But he\u2019s pulled back into the organization, of course, for one last job in Russia. Naturally, that job goes even badder (or worse), and he goes on a rampage to exact some revenge November-style.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe November Man\u201d is slick enough to keep an audience entertained but really is little more than a cable television action flick. It probably only gets a theatrical release due to Brosnan\u2019s name and the traditionally weak Labor Day box office. Efficiently directed by Roger Donaldson, who had given us much better films like \u201cThe Bank Job\u201d and the wonderful \u201cThe World\u2019s Fastest Indian,\u201d one wonders who thought \u201cThe November Man\u201d script was worthy of the talent involved.<\/p>\n

No one embarrasses themselves here, but Donaldson has to be careful, because this is just marginally better than his last flick something called \u201cSeeking Justice.\u201d Money is what makes these projects happen, of course. Some bean counters with computers projected that this kind of thing will make money. And, I\u2019m sure they are right. It\u2019s just a shame, because it will do little for Brosnan\u2019s legacy. The man can, after all, really act. And when he\u2019s on, you get something like \u201cThe Matador,\u201d where his charisma pays off oodles and oodles. And he\u2019s funny too, luckily we get a little of that here, especially, when he guzzles Scotch while platonically sharing a hotel room with knockout and former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s really wrong with \u201cThe November Man\u201d is that it is such an implausible premise from the get go. The characters race around the Serbian City of Belgrade as though it is an amusement park. They shoot, punch, or run over anyone who gets in their way. And we never see a single police officer that I can think of. It is lawless anarchy that just doesn\u2019t make any logical sense. The idea is to keep the action moving so that we never take a moment to think about it, but in giving us a monotonous cycle of violence the viewer\u2019s mind is bound of wander. Mine did. And that\u2019s when I knew the film wasn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n

Finally, the Russians get a bum rap here. Sure, I\u2019m no fan of that guy Vladimir Putin, but in \u201cThe November Man\u201d Russians are depicted as sexually perverse monsters. I mean all the Russians in the film are that way. Such a one dimensional depiction is hard to swallow and certainly does bode well for its box office returns in the Motherland.<\/p>\n

Pierce Brosnan, 61 and still got it? Well, of course, he\u2019s still got it. But \u201cThe November Man\u201d has nothing that makes it worthy of him.<\/p>\n

NOTE: This review first appeared in the Times Herald<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Has Brosnan still got it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","has-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3501"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3508,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions\/3508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}