“The November Man” Review : Been there done that

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Photo Courtesy of Creative Commons

Pierce Brosnan in “November Man” walking away from crime scene.

Well it is truly the end of the summer for movies that’s for sure. What’s there to say, I mean just looking at the cast for the “November man” there’s former Bond Pierce Brosnan, a former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, and Luke Bracey who showed a lot of potential.

The cast did a great job and I can’t lie, I was brought into the film for the nostalgia of a former Bond in a spy action film back on the big screen. The movie had a cool “spy vs. protégé, things go wrong and spy retires” theme. Then we have the time fast forward and somehow he needs to get back in the game and from there things go wrong.

Now that’s all fair game, it hooked me for the first 20 minutes with that scenario I explained earlier. But then I wondered to myself: How can this movie differentiate itself to the other spy action films that came before it? To put it bluntly, it didn’t. The movie didn’t attempt to innovate the spy action genre whatsoever.

You get a feel that this has been done before and executed much more efficiently to be honest. The film’s script was just nothing more than cliché’s left and right after the somewhat long first half. One example of the many cliché’s was when cartoony Russian goons and a CIA spy being unmercifully slaughtered in a very cliché fashion spree.

Trust me the first half made me wonder what was it trying to accomplish. When you get to the second half I was left like oh this is like the “Bourne” films I saw a couple of years back. Aside from the been there done that feel the whole premise of the master spy vs. protégé almost worked, but failed to reach its full potential due to a subpar script and poor directing.

I just wanted to get up and go; but to be honest, Olga Kury Lenko’s character was much more interesting than the whole master vs. protégé conflict. On the bright side it’s wasn’t a complete drag to finish the film, but it does make you want to stop watching at times, I can’t blame anyone who does either of the two.

The movie as a whole didn’t have a solid script and you can tell there were multiple rewrites here and there and directing wasn’t bang on. With this kind of cast that not only has experience in other spy action films and new faces with potential it was just a cast effort wasted to be honest.

My suggestion would be just to catch this on Red Box for it will make that movie night feel decent with this killing spree walking away without looking back explosions fix with no problem. Or you can just catch on TV when you just flip through channels because it will deliver at least some sort of amusement.