Follow the money and it will take you to the person responsible for murder.
Just when we were wondering what could have prompted Pierce Brosnan, who hasn’t aged well at all, to do this mess of a thriller (based on There are No Spies , a novel he has the rights to and has been planning to make for years now), the credits rolled. You just can’t miss the Indian names in the producer credits.
The November Man is one of those producer-portfolio films… a win-win for all parties. An arrangement that helps an independent film producer Sriram Das get a film to his credit with a former Bond, while Pierce Brosnan gets the money finally to make the film he has been planning for ages, even if he now has a paunch and can’t run as fast as he could. Former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko plays the target of a CIA cover-up operation and there’s just one man who can stop them. This is Brosnan trying to be Sean Connery all over again. Except that this is a script that’s dead on arrival with its contrived plot and a loudly staged mentor-student conflict. The lines are expository and probably borrowed from a compilation of Hollywood action movie clichés.
The responsibility to make it work is then passed on to the stunts team. And Brosnan is not quite the man he used to be.
The November Man is the kind of film you wouldn’t mind catching on TV during ad breaks of the show you are hooked to… just to see what age can do to good old Remington Steele .
Well, at least he has a lot more retirement money now.
The November Man
Storyline: A former spy comes out of retirement to protect a witness who is a target of the CIA
Bottomline: Someone had a lot of money to give Pierce Brosnan
