The November Man has an air of desperation

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      Starring Pierce Brosnan. Rated 14A.

      Paycheque movies can be okay. They give older actors and directors something lucrative to do between jobs they obviously prefer, while offering popcorn munchers the chance to see Helen Mirren, say, or Ben Kingsley wielding wisecracks and the odd AK-47. But the whole air of desperation around The November Man is so dispiriting, you can practically feel the participants willing it to just be over, even in the midst of competently executed car chases or whatever.

      Pierce Brosnan, who also helped produce this embarrassment, at least suffers appropriately, since the ex-Bondian’s main mission as ex CIA agent Peter Devereux is to look pained at having to go through the motions for—you guessed it—one last job.

      When we meet Devereux, he’s running a small café in Montenegro, where he advises young protégé David Mason (Luke Bracey—yet another Australian turned into a generic Yank) not to get involved with the local womenfolk. He should talk! The older man’s connection with a highly placed Russian (Caterina Scorsone) is what sucks him back in. She has damaging goods on a Putin-esque politician (Lazar Ristovski) who did extra-nasty stuff during one of the Chechen wars; this ties him in with Serbian social worker Alice Fournier (coincidental Bond girl Olga Kurylenko), currently helping sex-trafficking victims of that conflict.

      Because we can’t possibly imagine the horrible conditions described luridly in the workaday script—based on Bill Granger’s There Are No Spies novel—we get extended rape flashbacks courtesy of Aussie director Roger Donaldson, who started out with stylish stuff like Smash Palace and No Way Out and here just seems distracted. The pounding music, occasional explosions, a subplot about duplicitous CIA honchos, and a surprisingly inept female assassin (Amila Terzimehic) accompany the steadily rising body count in this nonsensical thriller, which centres more on the younger agent’s daddy issues than any romance or derring-do. It’s all very sleep-inducing. On the other hand, the utter lack of police presence in Moscow and Belgrade, despite ceaseless shootouts, could be inspiring to criminals and would-be spies.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      HellSlayerAndy

      Aug 27, 2014 at 12:42pm

      Caterina Scorsone is a Canadian actress who plays a Russian!

      Come on, play the Home Team, guys.