Review of The November Man (2014) by Mad M — 30 Nov 2014

This movie was actually released in November in this country, woo! The November Man presents a welcome return for Pierce Brosnan in an action role and actually has a better plot than you might expect.

When the movie started I thought it was going to be one of 'those' movies. I thought it'd look cheap, be convoluted, not make much sense and just all around not be very good but the movie kept going and it surprised me. I was wondering at first how they'd make a whole movie out of two people going after each other but actually quite a lot happened in this movie. It had some political intrigue, some good characters and it was all wrapped around some good action scenes. It's interesting that I've read some reviews that say the clichés start near the end and other reviews that say they started at the beginning because I didn't really notice and terrible clichés. There might be a cool-guys-don't-look-at-explosions moment which is actually in promotional pictures of the movie, that got my eyes rolling, but even that was executed differently than usual. However, I'll admit that there's a moment right near the end where the movie turns into Max Payne for a moment, but it happens about 3 minutes from the end so it doesn't really matter. I kept waiting for some really bad clichés to happen like someone gets the ominous phone call and then hits the table with anger or something like that but that never happened, so that's good.

Pierce Brosnan clearly had fun in the role because he's awesome in this movie. Devereaux is like a hardened Bond, he gets right down to business and doesn't let anything get in the way. Some of my favorite parts are when he's talking to Mason, Devereaux is just so confident and the way that he talks down to Mason just made me laugh, it's a joy to watch. I liked Olga Kurylenko too, it was good to see her in a movie again and she does well with Brosnan and her character is really good too. As the movie kept going it seemed like there were too many characters but after awhile they all fit into place and they made sense with the story and the actors did a good job. Same with some of the scenes, I thought some scenes in this were pointless at first but after awhile everything fit into place.

The fight scenes were filmed well, they weren't just a bunch of close up shaky cam shots to mask stuntmen, it was easy to see what was going on and some of what happened looked like it hurt, so it did its job well. I also thought that the music was quite good, it fit the mood of the movie well. And hey they even explain the title, which is actually quite cool.

It didn't seem to make much sense at first why Mason seemed to hate Devereaux so much, it makes sense why Devereaux hates Mason because Mason was the one in the wrong the whole time, it gets explained but it was odd. Also, seeing as how the movie is based around two people going after each other, the relationship wasn't really developed all that much, while the movie had a much bigger story to tell, one of the main parts was these two and what was there was fine but it could have been improved upon. The movie also had some stupid but cool moments, a couple of which I have mentioned but there are a couple more but it wasn't anything that took me out of it, like I said, they were cool.

I know everyone has already said this and I made a reference to it earlier on but this really does make me want to go watch his Bond films again, the movie just brings a lot of those feelings back. Some others have also said this is the kind of proper send off that he should have gotten as Bond. The November Man is a pretty cool movie that has a lot more to offer than just another generic action flick and features Pierce Brosnan back in the type of role that he is known for. Looking forward to a sequel and hey, maybe they could even make a franchise out of this, who knows?