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Joe & Anthony Russo Talk Making The Winter Soldier

Captain America TWS Blu-rayWith the blockbuster Captain America: The Winter Soldier being released on 3D Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD this Tuesday, we catch up with the directing team of brothers Joe and Anthony Russo to find out about their experience on the iconic Marvel project…

What makes Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier stand out from other Marvel movies?

Joe: I think it is the level of realism and intensity that makes this movie stand out. Up to this point, I think Marvel films have really embraced the fantasy component, but we have tried to infuse it with intensity and edge. It’s aggressive. We wanted a movie that would grab you and wouldn’t let go until the end. Hopefully we’ve accomplished that and I think that’s what distinguishes it from other Marvel movies.

How did you accomplish this?

Joe: We talked to Marvel early on and said, “People will tell you that they love chocolate ice cream, but if all you give them is chocolate ice cream, sooner or later they’ll get sick of it.” We wanted to throw a curveball and add something to their toolbox going forward that they could use to diversify and dimensionalize the universe.

Why was it so important for you to ground the action in reality? 

Anthony: The movie is set in the political genre and that world is exciting because it has stakes that feel real to you. We were trying to play on a lot of our contemporary anxieties in the storytelling and the realisms flowed from that. This movie has a darker tone and it needs real stakes. That’s what drove us.

How difficult was the challenge of adding more realism to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

Joe: Well, I was ecstatic as any fan on the planet when I saw what Kevin Feige was doing with The Avengers. I’ve always thought in my own head, ‘How do you pull off an Avengers movie?’ How do you get past so many logistical and financial reasons that mean this movie shouldn’t exist? It’s a real feat, and he pulled it off. If you knew how complicated it is behind-the-scenes to make a movie like that, you’d be amazed. You want the comfort food of that idea, but I think that in order for these movies to keep growing and staying interesting, they have to shift; the tone has to shift. We have to experiment with different flavors…

Anthony: Like Pistachio!

Joe: …To keep it fresh. Hopefully, that’s what we’ve hopefully done with this movie.

What was your biggest challenging in directing the movie?

Joe: The choreography of the action is intense and it’s a very protracted process. It takes a lot of prep and you’re working with a lot of people. Thankfully, we were working with really talented people; from our stunt coordinators to our VFX department to our special effects guys – everybody was the best in the business. Marvel attracts the crème de la crème of talent in the business.

Was it easier to step into a film where most of the characters have been pre-established in earlier Marvel movies?

Joe: We come from television shows like Community and Arrested Development. We always say that after two episodes, the actor knows the character better than we ever will. In that sense, it’s easy to rely on the actor to bring truth to the character. It’s great for us because it’s like a short hand where they can show up with the characters already in place. We just worry about the arcs and the tone of the film. It takes a lot of burden off directing the performance and allows you to focus on the bigger picture of the movie.

How did you balance technology with real sets on Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier?

Anthony: We wanted to be very careful with that on this film. The level of realism was important to us and it was something that Marvel really embraced. It was a challenge to render the world and the effects in a way that felt very grounded and real world.

Joe: It’s an execution thing. We had a sequence on a freeway and we could have gone to a back-lot and built a little stretch of freeway and green-screened it. But, instead of that, we went to our hometown and got in a lot of trouble for shutting down the freeway for two weeks. We were able to shoot and execute a lot of those stunts practically and I think that enhances your experience because you can feel those things happening for real.

How did it feel to shoot in your hometown, Cleveland?

Joe: It was awesome to be able to go home and shoot. It’s a town that we love and know really well. Not only were we able to share this town with the crew, but also it was easier for us to find locations. We know where everything is, so we could quickly explain to the crew where certain locations could be shot. We understood how to shoot the town because it was the third movie that we had shot there. Also, it was fantastic to have our family around as a support system when you’re working on something of this scale.

Robert Redford was a stellar addition to the cast of Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. What was it like to direct such an iconic actor?

Joe: It was amazing.

Anthony: Amazing!

Joe: We couldn’t say enough about him as an individual, and as an actor. He’s truly a renaissance man. He’s like a prince of a human being. And we’re children of the 1970s and of 1970s films, so we’ve seen everything he’s done. I’ve seen Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid a million times. To be able to work with him was the highlight of our career.

Robert Redford is a distinguished director, as well as an accomplished actor. Did he offer his directorial input into the movie?

Joe: He is so easy-going and balanced and his knowledge base is incredible. He will offer input or advice when he feels it’s necessary, but he’s never overbearing with it.

Anthony: He’s very respectful and he’s just a lovely man. It was really a privilege to work with him.

What makes the Winter Soldier the perfect villain for the movie?

Joe: It’s a gift to have The Winter Soldier in our movie; it’s a real gift. The genius of [Ed] Brubaker’s comic run is that he took Captain America’s best friend and turned him into the villain. They always say that your hero is only as good as your villain. And, when the hero has so much emotional turmoil in his relationship with the villain, you can’t ask for better storytelling. We were gifted with a great story arc between Captain America and the Winter Soldier. That’s another reason why I think the movie skews darker, too. It’s very rare that you find a villain who has such a strong emotional connection to the hero and where the stakes are so high.

Anthony: It’s very complicated.

Joe: We said to them that this is Star Wars. You know, it’s Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker.

In your opinion, can any woman replace Peggy Carter in Captain America’s life?

Joe: Hayley Atwell did a fantastic job with that role. She’s very charming and beautiful.

Anthony: And that was certainly an issue that Cap was dealing with in this movie.

Joe: And it’s how to reconcile that in his life.

Anthony: But the relationships are very important in the movie in general. His relationship with Natasha [Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson] is very important in this film. And his relationships with Fury [Samuel L. Jackson] and The Falcon [Anthony Mackie] are also important.

How challenging was it to come up with a new design for Captain America’s costume in the film?

Joe: The execution of the costumes is a critical and key component for us in the movies. It’s based on our style and our tone and what we like. Again, with everything based in realism, we wanted the costume to be Kevlar-based. We wanted to make sure that the costume had a very functional purpose. That way, when he wears it and you look at him in it, you say “Oh, that’s to stop bullets. I understand.”

Would you say that the costume is as true-to-life as possible?

Joe: Captain America is a stealth operative for S.H.I.E.L.D in this movie, which is another factor that pointed us in a direction for the design of the costume. If the character is working in darkness and in clandestine operations, he can’t wear a target on his chest. He needs to move around in the shadows. We drew upon the more recent versions of the outfit from the comics.

How did your knowledge of comic books inform your directing style?

Anthony: It was most important in terms of the approach to the character and in terms of the version of Captain America we wanted to show in the movie. We didn’t want to get caught up in the boy-scout version; we really wanted to butch up the character. We wanted to bring him into the modern day and make him a man’s man that we could relate to. His virtues are like Rocky Balboa’s in the sense that he has a very simple goal and very fixed virtues. However, he’s unbreakable too, and that’s what is fun about him. In this movie, it was our job to think, ‘Ok, how are we going to break him?’ That’s very much how we approached the film.

John Ostrander: Too Much

I read recently that Dan Brown’s book Inferno has been optioned for a film. Brown is most famous for The DaVinci Code that was subsequently made into a film by Ron Howard starring Tom Hanks as Brown’s character Robert Langdon. I’m not a big Brown enthusiast, but I bought Inferno. I needed something to read, was looking for some light entertainment, and that was the best that was available.

I read it and sort of enjoyed it, as is the case with me for most of Mr. Brown‘s books. There were some very good scenes and taught suspense and/or action sequences but Brown also has to have his twists and often these start to strain credulity. That was very much the case for me in Inferno and I thought that the climax and resolution veered into science fiction. I like science fiction but this was not really a SF book. The story got to be too much.

“Too much” is also part of the theme and the plot of the book.

Central to the whole concept of the book are the theories of The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus who lived in the late 1700s/early 1800s. His theories involved the rate of population growth and the ability to feed everyone. He said “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” A Malthusian catastrophe occurs when the number of people in a given area exceeds the ability to feed them.

In the past, plagues and natural catastrophes would cut down on the population. One theory suggests the Black Death so reduced the amount of people in Europe that the survivors actually wound up having more prosperity and this led, in part, to the Renaissance. In theory.

But we’ve gotten better at keeping people alive; people live longer – at least in first world countries. And that will put a further strain on resources – not just food but water and other resources.

Brown isn’t the only person who has dabbled in Malthusian theory. In DC’s Green Lantern, the planet Maltus was originally the home of those who would become the Guardians – who created the whole Green Lantern Corps. Maltus had a severe overpopulation problem; the planet’s name of Maltus is so close to Malthus that it’s inconceivable to me that the writer wasn’t referring to him.

Central to Brown’s plot is that, according to Malthus’ projections and given the rate of increase in the world’s population, it becomes a mathematical certainty that the Malthusian catastrophe of overpopulation will occur in about fifty years.

That in itself is pretty depressing. Add to that environmental catastrophe and the view gets bleaker. (We’re not going to debate climate change here; deny it if you wish but do it elsewhere. And while you’re at it, deny the Earth is round.) There are climate scientists who think we’ve already gone past the tipping point and we can only mitigate the damage, not stop it.

It’s not that there aren’t solutions to these problems but those solutions are themselves difficult, complex, perhaps draconian and involves the world acting in concert. It will call for drastic change. That looks very unlikely. I don’t think there is the political will to achieve it; politicians these days are concerned almost exclusively to keeping their constituents happy. We will have to be in the crisis before we will address it realistically and that will be too late. The world Dan Brown writes of in Inferno will be well on its way to becoming Green Lantern’s world of Maltus.

And to think I picked up Inferno for a little light reading.

Marc Alan Fishman Celebrates the Wee Con

Kokomo-ConAs I fully decompressed from Wizard World Chicago, I looked towards the end of the Unshaven event calendar. On it: the Cincinnati Comic Expo – competing against the Cincy Comic Con, Cincinnati Comic Con, and the Cin City Comic Massacre (I think two out of three of those are real). Then, onto the mammoth New York Comic Con, which will boast near San Diego level of attendance. And, finally, gracefully, completing at the Kokomo Comic Con, in Kokomo, Indiana. You’ll get there fast, but take it slow. Sorry, it had to be said. And with it being said, I’m elated that once again, Unshaven will return.

The show itself feels like the comic cons I only heard about from old timers (like everyone on this site minus the Tweeks, Emily, and myself, heh heh heh). It’s pop-culture D-lister, and flashy/trashy exhibitor free. In their place, small publishers (ahem), independent freelance artists and writers, comic book and toy dealers, and a great handful of truly unique artisans – like the educational toy makers Cogbots, and the Highwind Steamworks, steampunk jewelers extraordinaire. The best part? The guest of honor, one Denny O’Neil.

Perhaps I’m a bit jaded in my love for the show. I was a crucial stepping stone in introducing Mr. O’Neil (who I’ll be uncomfortable calling anything but, until perhaps we shake hands in person) to the show-runners. As Unshaven had previously been attendees at the show for four years running, we had become more than a table-fee to Shawn Hilton and his crew. I dare say we became friends. Sure, his store is always ready to stock our books. And sure, I may have ensured we got prime floor real estate for making introductions for way-more-well-known-legends, but at the core of it all, the Kokomo Comic Con and its purveyors are fans first. I respect that. Hell, I live that.

All buzz marketing aside, Kokomo Con represents something I am coming to cherish more and more: a convention that can be enjoyed in a single day; where comics and community trump blatant commercialism. Before I get too deep into that sentiment, let me make something clear: I’m not saying Wizard or Reed or the San Diego Comic Con (or whatever gigantic conglomerates exist in the comic book convention circuit) are bad for building their Frankenshows.

As a strict capitalist, Unshaven Comics couldn’t exist without them. But with this past Wizard show, there’s certainly an energy drain when you sit behind the same table for four days straight, and see an unending queue of potential customers. And those customers are always quick to denote that they “just got there”, and are “checking everything out.” Every sale is a war with their desire not to miss some unlit corner of the show before potentially returning for a purchase. But I digress.

The single-day community convention is devoid of such pretense. It exists to excite for one day, and one day alone (duh). Because of that, the attendees tend to enjoy all of the convention. There’s no need to arrive hours early for the potential of snagging that autograph by the third extra in that show you watched back in the eighties.

Even if the entirety of the Kokomo Conference and Event Center is packed to the nines with booths, a show-goer will be able to peruse everything with time to confer with every artist and dealer. The air of the show itself is that which I revert to when I think of comics and my ill-gotten youth: it’s all about discovery, discussion, and debate. Find me a swatch of NYCC floor space where someone is truly digging through a long-box for that Suicide Squad #18, and I’ll eat my beard. At the smaller shows, the fans that arrive at the door are there first and foremost for guys like me (and way more for guys like Mr. O’Neil). And while we’ll never sell as many books in a given day there versus a NecroNomiCon… the sales we do make tend to make us life-long fans in lieu of passersby giving us a pity purchase.

At the end of day, there’s room of course for both kinds of cons (and to be fair, I think the Cincinnati Comic Expo will reside somewhere between the two). But phaser to my forehead? Color me simply. The shock and awe of the major shows has worn me thin, and in their wake, I yearn for intimacy. A show where one need not shout to hold a conversation. A show where you’re invited to learn, to discuss, to debate, and to celebrate specificity. A show where you can get that cherished issue of Green Lantern / Green Arrow signed, and not have a security guard breathing down your neck to move it along. A show where a truer comic book fan may truly be themselves… all without having to drop significant coin on that selfie with the best friend of The Great American Hero.

And that, my friends, is a convention worth looking forward to.

 

The Point Radio: The Real MOST INTERESTING MAN

In the late 90’s, the music of ladies known as SWV was all over our radio and at the top of the charts. Then personal pressures drove them apart, but now it’s SWV REUNITED with new music and a hit reality show. We talk to Taj & LeLe about hitting the top twice. Plus forget about that guy in the beer ad, Johnny Pagozzi  is the Most Interesting In The World, named so by a lot of folks including Sir Elton John. We’ll let him explain why he gets that title.

THE POINT covers it 24/7! Take us ANYWHERE on ANY mobile device (Apple or Android). Just  get the free app, iNet Radio in The  iTunes App store – and it’s FREE!  The Point Radio  – 24 hours a day of pop culture fun. GO HERE and LISTEN FREE  – and follow us on Twitter @ThePointRadio.

The Law Is A Ass #325: Did Daredevil Have To Be Disbarred?

lawass-300x150-7523070Well, the story didn’t get the law wrong. But I’m not sure it got the law right, either.

The story in question is Daredevil v.3 # 36. The law in question is… Well, that would be telling. Which is exactly what I’ll be doing for the next thousand words or so, telling you about that law.

Daredevil v. 3 # 36 was the culmination of a multi-part story. Multi-part story short: Robert Oglivy has been framed for murder. Robert’s father wanted Matt Murdock, who is secretly Daredevil, to represent his son. Matt was reluctant, because Ogilvy was the head of the latest iteration the Sons of the Serpent – a racist hate group which secretly controlled the New York City justice system. Ogilvy blackmailed Matt by threatening to out Matt as Daredevil, unless Matt agreed to help Robert.

In order to take away Ogilvy’s leverage, Matt…

SPOILER WARNING! (more…)

Martha Thomases’ Girl Fight!

Last week, I vented my pique at Marvel’s tone-deaf marketing of the new Spider-Woman comic. Then, on Monday, my esteemed colleague, Mindy Newell, offered a different perspective. Who’s right? Normally, I would say I’m right because I’m the mommy. However, in this case, Mindy has also given birth, and even trumped my creds by being a grandmother. So I’m not playing that card. This also means I can’t just say “Because I said so.” Denied my two favorite debating tactics, I’m going to have to approach this from a different angle. Despite what one might think about feminism and other kinds of so-called “identity politics,” there isn’t a single governing board that determines what is “politically correct.” There are married feminists who take their husbands’ last name, stay home with the kids, and volunteer at the PTA. There are radical lesbian separatists who live in communes and never have to interact with men at all. There are feminists who wear make-up, dye their hair, use Botox and wear high heels. There even used to be Republican feminists. To be a feminist, you must support equal rights and opportunities for all, and respect the right of women to define themselves and their role in the world. See? You don’t even have to be a woman to be a feminist. Being a feminist doesn’t mean one doesn’t enjoy sex. Not even heterosexual sex. It does mean one opposes coercion, rape, and the unwilling objectification of one’s partner or partners. It means one can imagine a woman being the subject, rather than the object, of desire. In other words, feminism is not the same as Puritanism. So, what does this have to do with comic books, I hear my editor thinking? Plenty. For one thing, it means that a comic book cover, like the variant for Spider-Woman #1, is not a feminist image. It is not intended to make women feel empowered, nor to show a woman being heroic. However, that doesn’t mean a feminist can’t like the cover. Manara is a famous artist with millions of fans. Liking the cover doesn’t make them “bad” feminists. As a feminist, I am in favor of pleasure and joy. I like a lot of media that isn’t specifically feminist. I like Power Girl, for crying out loud. I like those inane Silver Age stories where Superman has to “teach a lesson” to Lois Lane for having the nerve to try to do her job and find out his secret identity. And, as a feminist, I’d like to propose a new standard for graphic storytelling, similar to the Bechdel test, dubbed the Willis test by the Jezebel blog. They quote pioneering rock critic Ellen Willis, who wrote this: “A crude but often revealing method of assessing male bias in lyrics is to take a song written by a man about a woman and reverse the sexes. By this test, a diatribe like [the Rolling Stones’] “Under My Thumb” is not nearly so sexist in its implications as, for example, Cat Stevens’ gentle, sympathetic “Wild World”; Jagger’s fantasy of sweet revenge could easily be female—in fact, it has a female counterpart, Nancy Sinatra’s “Boots” – but it’s hard to imagine a woman sadly warning her ex-lover that he’s too innocent for the big bad world out there.” Would Supergirl try to teach Jimmy Olsen a lesson if he tried to find out her secret identity? Of course she would. Would Superman wear a costume that distracted his enemies by focusing their attention on his sexual organs? Of course he would not. Would Spider-Man stick his ass in the air submissively, as a way to demonstrate his web-sticking abilities? I don’t think so. Is this a comic book I would buy for a young girl? Probably not, unless she was taking a class in gender studies and had the vocabulary to talk about it. None of this will stop me from enjoying Power Girl stories (unless Scott Lobdell starts writing them and turns her into Starfire), as long as I still find them fun. Comic books and fun. Now that’s a marketing campaign I’d like to see.

Tweeks: Power Rangers Super Megaforce For All!

bj7sv31caaadioo-2509948There’s a misconception that the Power Rangers are just for little kids or for boys (or Karen Gillan – <a href=”

saw her ice bucket challenge, right?), but we think the cast of Saban’s Power Rangers Super Megaforce offers a little something for everyone.   Don’t believe us?  Watch our interview with the Power Rangers and try not to come away charmed and ready to watch the new season Saturdays at noon on Nickelodeon.

Dennis O’Neil: Comic Books Even Teachers Can Love

toon_graphicsThat was the headline above a New York Times story that ran in the paper’s Art section…

Hold on! Before we go any further, let’s think about this. The Times headline implies that at least a substantial number of teachers don’t like comics. Not true, at least not in my experience. Marifran, who taught for 50 years, used comics I brought home as classroom prizes in both a Catholic school in Brooklyn and a public school here in Nyack. She got no negative feedback from either parents or school officials. And the kids seemed to like being rewarded in this way. Comics were a small but welcome addition to her workplaces.

Then why did the august gray lady of American journalism imply that comics and lesson plans might be a bad mix? Maybe because once upon a time, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 years ago, comics did have a bum rep among certain citizens, probably including teachers, especially those who read editorials, heeded clergy and other authority figures, including a New York City psychiatrist. And, while we’re on the subject of authority figures, these citizens thought that if United States congressmen said something was a menace to our youth and even convened hearings to investigate, well, by golly, it was a menace, whatever it was.

As far as I can tell, comic books’ days as scapegoats and quarries of witch hunts were pretty much done by the late 50s and early 60s, when Julius Schwartz refashioned a lot of long dormant superheroes and Stan Lee changed editorial attitudes and gave comics an aura of hipness and, dare we utter it, of sophistication. But sometimes old convictions refuse to die, especially if those holding the convictions have no reason to question them. So, yeah, I’m sure there still exist folk who believe comic books to be venues for wickedness, but there can’t be many of them.

Which brings us back to the Times piece. It concerns a new publishing venture, Toon Graphics, and its founder, Francoise Moulay. Ms Moulay is offering comics to schools as tools to help kids learn. She believes that comics can help teach reading because youngsters, unlike adults, because they are used to extract meaning from information. “That’s how they make sense of the world,” Ms Moulay told the Times reporter. “Comics are good diagrams for how to extract meaning from print.”

That makes comics a natural extension of what psychologists say is something infants do before very early in life, make crude, preverbal narratives – stories – to deal with the continual barrage of information their senses are providing. They begin to assemble cause-and-effect scenarios and soon all that… stuff isn’t so scary because they’ve begun to understand it. Then they grow up and acquire language and… well, it can go a lot of ways from there. Maybe they write King Lear. Or go to work for the New York Times. Or contribute to ComicMix.

 

Mike Gold: Sinful Sin City

I had a whole rant plotted out in my mind, but when my fingers hit the keyboard I decided against it. Perhaps I’m mellowing in my antiquity. I hope not, as being not-mellow is how I make my living. Maybe it’s because I’m going to this weekend’s Baltimore Comic Con, always a wonderful event, and I’m awash in breathless anticipation.

Well, either way, I’ve got a deadline and ComicMix’s editor-in-chief is an asshole (not to be confused with this column’s editor, Adriane Nash, who is not an asshole) and I’ve got all these Sin City thoughts attacking my brain like anti-bodies at a clown orgy and I’m willing to share. Let’s see how long it takes for me to become non-mellow.

Fellow ComicMixer Martha Thomases and I saw Sin City: A Plot To Kill With last week. I enjoy going to the movies with Martha because, together, we tend to like just about everything we see. We have a spirited and usually positive conversation afterwards, often at the fabled Katz’s Delicatessen on New York’s lower east side, where we both enjoy the pickles.

This time, well, not so much. Maybe it’s because we were creatively filling time before the Doctor Who season debut. Maybe because we went to an Italian restaurant where they didn’t serve pickles, although the garlic bread was great. But, you see, I’m spending all this time talking about food instead of the movie. That alone should tell you something.

It’s not that A Plot To Kill With was a lousy movie. It was, essentially, a remake of the first one. The rule of thumb for sequels and remakes is “what about this is different from the original and, at the same time, worthwhile.” There are plenty of sequels that equal or exceed the source material: From Russia With Love, Godfather II, Spider-Man II (the real one, not the doppelganger featuring the Flying Nun), and quite a few others. But if “they” were to do a sequel to The Maltese Falcon (and they sort of did, and it sucked) it would have to pick up a dozen years later with Humphrey Bogart waiting for Mary Astor to get out of prison.

Oh, wait. They did that. It was called Blues Brothers 2000.

Sin City Il Secondo brought us nothing new. The Frank Miller comics-to-movies style is no longer new. It’s been used in most subsequent Frank Miller films. These days, I watch that stuff and I wonder if Lynn Varley gets royalties. Most of the multiple plotlines simply vanish into a haze that is more boring than it is confusing. There’s some truly fine performances from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Powers Boothe, Dennis Haysbert, Christopher Meloni and Christopher Lloyd, but storywise I’m reminded of what happened when they poured acid on the Toons in Who Killed Roger Rabbit.

Worse still, the amazing thing about the first movie – the surprisingly powerful performance from Mickey Rourke – was just lame. His character was predictable and not engaging and, even worser, his Marv prosthetics weren’t as impressive as they were in the first movie. He looked like he was wearing a Ben Cooper mask.

Sin City Le Deuxième was one of those unfortunate movies that got worse upon reflection. When we left the theater we didn’t particularly feel we wasted our time. With each passing day, that feeling faded and by now I want my time back.

I looked up the opening weekend box office receipts. Sin City Zwei pulled in $24.00. That means: a) we didn’t see it in 3-D, and b) we were the only ones in North America who paid to get in.

And that means the entire rest of North America is smarter than we were.

 

Box Office Democracy: “The November Man”

the-november-man-movie-banner-01-980x652-3079559

There’s a moment in the first half of The November Man when Pierce Brosnan’s Peter Devereaux is having a tense conversation with his former protégée David Mason (Luke Bracey) and he says “You can either be a human or a killer of humans” and that’s a cool line and it caps off a tense scene but it has nothing at all to do with anything that happens in the film.  Instead The November Man is a movie that strings together a number of spy-action clichés to make a movie that isn’t unenjoyable by any means but doesn’t provide anything particularly original.  It’s as if Brosnan, an executive producer on this movie, has spent the years since he exited the Bond franchise watching all of the spy movies he could find with a notebook trying to find a way back in to the genre that left him behind.

There are some great sequences in this film.  Brosnan doesn’t, and maybe never did, have the physicality to be a believable action hero in this day and age but they structure things very well so he can be the smartest guy in the movie and he can do things by being in the right place and by getting the jump on people.  It’s a little bit like The Bourne Identity crossed with a Droopy cartoon but I mean that in the most flattering way possible.  Younger men run around and do little bits of parkour and whatnot and when they get to a corner Brosnan is there to hit them in the face with a pipe or a shovel or his elbow or whatever.  It’s a breath of fresh air after watching Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford pretend they could keep up with 20 year-olds two weeks ago.

The plot is nonsense.  There are dialogue scenes to keep the action scenes apart but there’s no rhyme or reason and a disregard for continuity even from scene to scene.  There is a sequence late in the film where a young girl is kidnapped and it’s enough to make the younger agent to question his loyalty to the CIA but he saves those reservations for way after he kidnaps the girl with no apparent reservation off screen.  Devereaux is alternatively all about not having attachment to anyone who can be used against him and having tons and tons of friends and assorted other allies.  He even picks up more along the way.  The movie also features an astounding amount of violence to seemingly innocent people without asking us to take anyone to task for it.  Brosnan cuts the femoral artery of a completely innocent woman and doesn’t even seem to feel bad about it.  She never comes back to the movie either, for all we know he murdered her.

This is part of a much larger disregard The November Man has for all its female characters.  With the exception of the femme fatale Russian assassin none of the female characters do anything competently; they are pawns to be acted upon by the stronger male characters.  They can’t fight, they can’t do their jobs, and they can’t even run or hide effectively.  The incompetent female CIA operative sort of gets a chance to get revenge on the man who treated her so badly but she does it by making a phone call so a man can do it for her.  Olga Kurylenko, the female lead, is constantly a victim and the further we get in to the film the more we dive in to the depths of her character’s victimhood.  She gets a brief moment of comeuppance against her assailants towards the end but the revenge on the man who ruined her life is reserved for a man.  It’s a shame that Brosnan has left the Bond franchise but he can’t help but keep making his girls pretty plot devices.

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