Thriller

• Title: The November Man
• IMDb: link

Five years after retiring, ex-CIA specialist Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) is reactivated by his old boss (Bill Smitrovich) and put on a plane to Russia to retrieve the love of his life (Mediha Musliovic) who has been working undercover in the Russian Government for more than a decade. Things go terribly wrong pitting Devereaux against his old agency and his protege (Luke Bracey) in a conspiracy that reaches into both the U.S. and Russian Governments involving the Presidential hopes of a genocidal Russian general (Lazar Ristovski).

Based on Bill Granger‘s novel, The November Man isn’t a bad B-movie action flick but it is a tad too convoluted for its own good. The reasoning behind putting Devereaux in the field is sketchy at best, particularly after the villain is revealed. Brosnan can play the aging spy in his sleep and Olga Kurylenko makes the most out of the over-complicated Alice who holds the key to the entire sordid affair.

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• Title: A Most Wanted Man
• IMDb: link

Notable for being the final non-Hunger Games role of Philip Seymour Hoffman, A Most Wanted Man is a slow-burning espionage thriller involving a secret German anti-terrorism unit tracking a potential suspect (Grigoriy Dobrygin). Although it’s based on the work of the same author, sadly, it’s not Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (which surprisingly moves at a far better pace than A Wanted Man).

The main takeaway from the film is how little actually happens in surveillance and much of what we do see (including a flailing romantic subplot) isn’t always that interesting. The cast is well chosen, and Hoffman leads a group of talented actors (Robin Wright, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe) each providing strong performances, but the movie lacks the will or motivation to put them to better use than we see here. It’s certainly not a bad film by any means, and is certainly worth viewing for the performances alone, but the end result is less than the sum of its parts.

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