An ex-C.I.A. operative is brought back in on a very personal mission and finds himself pitted against his former pupil in a deadly game involving high level C.I.A. officials and the Russian President-elect.

It’s nice to see Pierce Brosnan working as a spy again.

pic The November Man was an enjoyable spy/action movie based on the book There Are No Spies by Bill Granger. Unfortunately, that was it. It was enjoyable, but nothing stood out to make it memorable. Brosnan does a great job. He brings back the suave Bond he used to do with the right amount of “kickassery” required for this movie.

I haven’t seen a spy/action movie that doesn’t suffer from techno-magic yet, but The November Man comes close. The technology didn’t seem too far-fetched for the CIA—most of it involved drones and cell phone locators, which seemed believable in the post-Snowden world. However, I did have an issue with some of the action sequences: people don’t get back up and fight full force after getting hit in the head with a metal pipe swung like a baseball bat. Yeeouch!

The plot had the right amount of twists for a spy thriller, but they were too predictable. Overall, The November Man is enjoyable but not memorable, which is too bad—I’d like to watch more.