Now is the time of fantastic spy thrillers.

A genre once thought a casualty of the Cold War ending has risen from its own ashes and reinvented itself. A genre once thought silly and unrealistic, now is viewed as gritty and exhilarating.

“The November Man” (Rated R; 108 mins) is a film stuck in a forgotten time. A time rightfully forgotten.

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“The November Man” is an action thriller directed by Roger Donaldson, and staring Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey, and Olga Kurylenko.

The film follows ex-CIA operative Devereaux, played by Brosnan. After being out of the business for five years, Devereaux finds himself brought back in for a mission very personal to him. After everything goes wrong, he finds himself on the run. Pitted against a former pupil of his, he is in a deadly game that involves everyone from Russian Officials to CIA agents.

When writing a screenplay, many writers start out with an outline.

An outline tends to be a list of scenes and story points that the script is going to go over. Some writers will make highly detailed outlines, so when they actually start writing things tend to be easy.

Others will make very basic outlines.

These writers tend to be in spot where they are trying to sell their idea to a studio. They do not have their idea fully set out, so they just put in simple points and hope to come up with it later.

“The November Man” seems like a film by someone who had forgotten to write out an outline.

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Instead, the writer decided to just go on the internet and print out a basic spy thriller outline. He then took this basic outline and wrote a script just as basic and cliché.

This film seems to not only go off an outline, but an old one.

This movie tries its best to be modern. Its cinematography is based off the Bourne series, its protagonist is a haunted man drinking his past away, the government is viewed as a shadowy character.

But at its heart, it is stuck in a period of time that did not know how to make serious spy films.

There are no stakes to this movie.

While Devereaux is in danger for quite a bit of the movie, it never seems like he will not come out of it. He is always the strongest, smartest and most talented agent on the screen. His character never seems to struggle for anything.

In every single fight scene Devereaux has, he easily overpowers what opponent comes at him. It does not matter that he, and Brosnan himself, are both in their sixties and are fighting younger men. The character cannot struggle.

This is a film riddled with actors who either do not care or are stuck with a terrible script.

Brosnan, Kurylenko and even Will Patton are given nothing throughout this script. While none of them are terrific actors, they are people who would have done well if their characters were anything more than stock characters.

Kurylenko’s specifically is a wasted character.

The character should be easy to invest in.

A woman wanting revenge on the Russian general that killed her family is a recipe for a dynamic character.

But after we get that little piece of background information, the movie stops being about her and completely forgets that she is a character that should be written about.

Do not see “The November Man.” Better yet, do not think of “The November Man.” Let it slip through your mind like every other generic action movie you have heard of. It will be easier that way.

Jacob Pierce can be reached by email at [email protected] on Twitter @JacobPierce1_DE, or at 536-3311 ext. 273