‘The November Man‘ was a pleasant surprise. Spy action movies rely very often on a combination of shadowy international intrigue, choreographed violence and sex in order to attract their specific audiences. The quality of the film directed by Roger Donaldson derives from the fact that its script is better written than the majority of other similar movies, the characters and situations are credible, and there are no big holes of gaffes in the story. A rare case of John Le Carre meeting James Bond if you wish.
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The hero of the film, Peter Devereax (Pierce Brosnan, who was James Bond for only two movies before being replaced by Daniel Craig) is a retired CIA spy who tries to live as normal a life as retired spies can live. He has a soft spot in his biography which is not known even by his former employers, and when he will be brought back in action for a mission which only he can accomplish, he will become part of a violent drama in which are involved his former bosses and colleagues, and which puts at risk not only his life but also the ones of the beings he loves mostly. The story takes place in Moscow and the Balkans after the fall of the Communism, and the dilemmas faced by the hero are very much similar to the ones faces by the heroes of the novels of John Le Carre: conflicts of generations and values in the spy organizations, loyalty of the ‘old boys’ to the principles of the war between good and evil and nostalgia for times when the enemy was better defined and known, sacrifices that are required in the personal lives and the immense difficulty to live ‘normally’.
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The fans of action movies will not be disappointed either. There is plenty of action, car chases and shootings which will make them happy. Acting is good, Pierce Brosnan does well his job both in the action scenes as well as when his hero is faced with tough choices, with good replicas from the rest of the team and especially from Olga Kurylenko and Luke Bracey. The weakest part of the film is in my opinion the stereotypical presentation of the Balkans and of the Russians. There may be an excuse in the fact that the story is based on a hero and book series created by Bill Granger in the 1980s and 1990s. A lot has changed since then in the world and in the way spy novels and spy movies scripts are written, and a more nuanced update would have been appropriate for a film made in 2014. Yet, it’s a well written, acted and paced movie which is better than the crowd.