When you star in a few James Bond movies, you can probably afford to rest on your laurels a little bit.

 Of course, some of those actors (Sean Connery) move on to long, successful careers, while others (Roger Moore) just sleep on piles of cash after their turn is over.

If “The November Man” is any indication, Pierce Brosnan probably should’ve chosen the latter option.

The idea, obviously, was to bring a former 007 (and a fine actor in his own right) back for one last ride on the spy train, and why not?

“GoldenEye” was pretty good, so an off-brand, low-rent spy thriller with a much older version of the guy from that movie should be okay too, right?

Honestly, while “The November Man” gets kind of despicable over time (more on that later), it’s an alright time for the first half or so.

Retired spy Peter Devereaux (Brosnan) is brought back into the game, and he has to evade the CIA and some evil Russians (of course) while protecting a woman with precious information sought by both parties (Olga Kurylenko).

Set that story in sleazy Serbian back-alleys and sprinkle in some political conspiracies and you’ve got something that, on paper, should at least be entertaining.

 For a while, it totally is entertaining, if nothing special. The first half moves at a blistering pace with little downtime, and even though the action isn’t noteworthy, it’s acceptable.

The problems come later on, when the film has to stop for a little while to sort its story out in the clumsiest way imaginable.

It arrives at its obvious plot twists with nothing resembling grace, and Brosnan’s character, framed as a hero the whole time, reveals himself to be extremely unlikable.

Specifically, they make it hard to root for Brosnan when he mutilates an innocent woman to prove some ill-defined point about intimate relationships to his former spy partner.

If this scene had been used to antagonize that character, it would have still been disturbing, but effective, I guess.

However, it’s immediately swept under the rug, and he’s still presented in a sympathetic light afterward.

Actually, it probably still would’ve been gross in a different context, because the film later actually does use a brief, unnecessary depiction of sexual assault to emphasize the villainy of a different character.

It’s referenced in passing several times throughout the film, but for some reason, they felt the need to actually show it to us to make sure we got the point.

This might sound like an overreaction to what is basically 45 seconds of screen time, but it stuck out in a bad way.

Even without the more nasty parts of the story, “The November Man” is about as bland and forgettable as it gets.

The plot is uninteresting and makes little sense in spots, none of the performances are worth noting and the action scenes don’t set it apart from anything else.

It’s hard to feel one way or another about it for a while, but once it gets distasteful, it’s pretty easy to actively dislike it.