Whatever else the contemporary thriller accomplishes, the form
strongly establishes the Central Intelligence Agency as major villains in the
world of espionage and counterespionage. Over the decades, films as different
as “Gorky Park,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and most recently, “A Most Wanted Man,” to
cite only a few examples, paint the Agency as thugs, torturers, assassins, and
even traitors. To its credit, “The November Man” continues that tradition.
The movie begins with an action scene that introduces the two
major characters, their motivations, and in effect, the meaning of all the
events that will follow. In one of those familiar pairings of the tutor and the
tyro, a senior agent, Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) instructs his younger
assistant, Mason (Luke Bracey) in the procedures of finding and shooting a
potential assassin. The plan works imperfectly, as Mason takes too long to
identify his quarry, reacts too slowly, and causes what the military
euphemistically calls collateral damage, an occurrence that shapes the rest of
the plot.
The picture opens again five years later, with Devereaux, now
retired in Switzerland, called upon by an old friend and comrade, Hanley (Bill
Smitrovich), to travel to Moscow. Hanley needs him to extract Natalia (Mediha
Musliovic), a spy with vital information about the next Russian president. In
Moscow, everything goes wrong — a puzzled and desperate Devereaux finds himself
the target of both the Russians and the CIA, which leads to the usual car chase
and shootouts, followed by a catastrophic explosion and a number of deaths.
Although the story of Devereaux’s attempts to discover the
source of the apparent plot against him dominates the action, a number of other
initially unrelated threads run through his quest. A vicious, coldblooded Russian assassin,
Alexa (Amila Terzimehic), journeys to Belgrade, Serbia, the movie’s central
location, then proceeds to knock off a series of victims. Alice Fournier (Olga Kurylenko), a young
woman who advises refugees from Russia, turns out to be Alexa’s prime quarry
and a vital cog in the complicated mechanism of the plot.
Adding more substance to those subjects, Mason and Devereaux
engage in a running cat-and-mouse game, with Devereaux constantly outwitting
the best efforts of a whole platoon of agents to capture or preferably, kill
him. An internal battle within the
Agency complicates matters further, as various individuals jockey for position
and accuse each other of betrayal.
The confusing layers of deception turn some portion of the
action thriller into something of a mystery story, puzzling both the audience
and Devereaux himself. The solution to
the puzzle not only creates more surprises but also suggests a quite plausible
scenario entirely relevant to the contemporary geopolitical situation.
Although it never abdicates its mission as a thriller, “The
November Man” adds more complexity to its relatively familiar action sequences of
automobile pursuits and crashes, explosions and stunts, and numerous gun
battles. In the process, Devereaux faces
the loss of one woman and attempts to save another, while contending with his
own former organization, a band of Russian security agents, and the relentless
female assassin.
Employing a mostly foreign cast and filmed beautifully in
Eastern Europe, the movie displays a slick and not entirely implausible
surface. Unusually for a slam-bang action thriller, the historical references
and the surprising political motivation behind all the action and all the plots
actually make a good deal of quite depressing sense. In light of recent
developments in the Middle East, the arguments of the chief villain should
strike a responsive chord in some sensibilities.
One of those actors who achieved a smooth transition from
television to the big screen — his first big hit was the TV series “Remington
Steele” — Pierce Brosnan accounts for much of the picture’s success. In “The
November Man” he departs from the character he’s played in the past, the suave,
handsome, dashing leading man with a touch of irony in the James Bond pictures
or the remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair.” In the role of Devereaux, perhaps
drawing on his work as a nasty character in a forgotten little flick called
“The Matador,” he displays a dark side — the charm turned into bitterness, the
irony into cynicism, the chiseled good looks grizzled and lined by time, that
subtle thief of youth: he makes a very good good/bad guy.
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2014.
