The November Man

For years Peter Devereaux served his country in the C.I.A as a faithful agent, until he became involved with a botched mission in Montenegro due to an inexperienced rookie agent named Mason. As a result, Devereaux quit the C.I.A. and retired to Switzerland running a lakeside café. Fast forward a few years, and Devereaux's former boss named Hanley pays him a visit to offer him a chance at one last mission.This time, the mission is to save Devereaux's ex-wife, Natalia Ulanova. As it turns out, Natalia's been turned into a mole for the C.I.A. to spy on a former war criminal and current Russian presidential candidate named Arkady Federov. Natalia has some crucial information on Federov, but she is only willing to reveal it to the C.I.A. if Devereaux is the one who brings her in. However, in the process of extracting her from the clutches of Arkady Federov, Natalia is shot and killed by a sniper. Devereax pursues the attacker only to find out it is his former protegė, Mason. Now on the run from the very organization he so faithfully served, Devereaux must figure out what exactly the information is that the C.I.A. is after, and why his ex-wife was murdered for this information.

The November Man starts out really well, with an easy to follow story, as well as some good action sequences to go along with it (at least in the beginning). Unfortunately, about halfway through the story goes from easy-to-follow to quite convoluted, and so it's difficult to tell just who are the good guys and who is bad; not to mention the motivations of some of the characters. Because of this, some of Devereaux's actions make no sense as to how they would help him figure out who wants the information and why.

"Peter Devereaux...know what we used to call you? The November Man. 'Cuz after you passed through, nothing lived." That line pretty much sums up the violence in The November Man. The action comes fast and brutal right from the beginning, and doesn't stop until the final scene. It's rare I'm ok with overly brutal, graphic violence (usually I'm only ok with it if it's something like Gladiator where the culture or time period is brutal, or war movies like Saving Private Ryan, instead of having graphic violence just for the heck of it), and in this case...well, as a whole I thought it didn't go too far, but there were some individual scenes where the violence felt like it could have been toned down a bit. There's one scene in particular where Devereaux breaks into an apartment, kidnaps a woman and inexplicably cuts her femoral artery as her boyfriend tries to save her. In the overall scheme of things it was unclear as to why that scene was included. As a result of both the violence and a jumbled story, The November Man is a mess of a film. I guess you can say it lives up to its title: like the month of November, The November Man is dismal and relatively lifeless. It's too bad, I was hoping it would be better since Pierce Brosnan is a great actor and I thought it would be cool to see him back in a super-spy thriller again like in his 007 days.