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The November Man

THE NOVEMBER MAN (Roger Donaldson). 98 minutes. Opens Wednesday (August 27). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN


The November Man is supposed to be a cat-and-mouse thriller about two spies – embittered veteran Peter Devereaux and young buck David Mason – who find themselves chasing each other after an operation goes south in the former Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, at some point somebody decided it would be better as a Bourne knockoff about a super-resourceful spy on the run, so now it’s a Pierce Brosnan movie about an embittered veteran staying two steps ahead of his former protege.

The two-hander dynamic is thrown out the window almost immediately to focus entirely on Devereaux (Brosnan, on world-weary autopilot) as he’s brought back into service to extract a double agent with vital information that could bring down Russia’s Putin-like president. In no time at all he runs afoul of Mason (Luke Bracey), who’s been chasing the case from another angle, and the game is on.

If you’ve never seen one of these movies before, you might be intrigued by director Roger Donaldson’s generic chase staging and fondness for CIA operators staring intently at monitors in under-lit situation rooms.

It’s less engaging to watch Bracey be repeatedly upstaged by Brosnan, who effortlessly rolls with whatever dumb thing the script requires of him. One confrontation between Devereaux and Mason hints at a much more complex movie.

I really wish they’d made that instead.

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