At the age of sixty-one and twelve years after his last film in the role of James Bond I imagine Pierce Brosnan doesn't necessarily want to be starring in second rate excursions of Bond movies as someone called Peter Devereaux. I imagine he'd like to be making more calm, thought-provoking dramas or interesting character pieces, but that just doesn't seem to be in the cards for the poor guy. He seems to have tried his hand at making low-risk romantic comedies and dramedies all of which have seemed to fail to give his career any kind of life after his exit from his most famous role. He has played in this genre before outside of the Bond franchise with 2005's little seen
The Matador, but not since have we seen Brosnan so blatantly admit to audiences that he misses playing the British Secret Service Agent. He would seemingly like to be a well-regarded leading man in more mature fare, but it is likely he sees no other options in maintaining his relevancy and so we will continue to get things such as
The November Man (I hear they're already moving forward with a sequel to this!) until he finds a role that will earn him an Oscar (though admittedly probably much later in his life) that will leave his legacy as something of a real cinematic presence and not just as the guy who once played James Bond. That would be the ideal way for things to go, but if he is determined to live in the now rather than with some sense of perspective he may pigeon-hole himself into the guy who never got over being Bond. It is easy to see Daniel Craig moving on after his term in the suit (despite the fact his non-Bond efforts have either failed commercially, critically or both since taking over the role), but that is an article for another day. Now, we are here to discuss
The November Man and the merits of being a late-August release and how the fact this is a film as generic as anything we've seen this year will still get a passing nod because there simply isn't much else going on. I like Brosnan, I always feel I'm rooting for him and I found myself doing that here even though, every few minutes, I had to ask myself where these characters were, where they were going or what exactly they were doing to further the plot. It's that kind of movie, but when the credits roll you shrug it off an move on, no harm done.
