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Two hundred million dollars is a number that should buy you a lot of things, a real script, a reason to care about the person on screen, maybe even one line of dialogue that does not sound like it was generated from a list of things action heroes say in trailers, and yet here is The Gray Man spending every cent of that Netflix check on bullets and drone shots while the actual human beings stuck inside the movie look around confused about what movie they are supposed to be making. I decided to give it a try after watching Gosling latest movie Project Hail Mary since this was describe as one of his best work and its not true at all, he has way better movies than this, this was a under the table Netflix failure if not very meh. The Russo brothers have been riding the Avengers goodwill for years now but the further they get from Marvel money and Marvel infrastructure the clearer it becomes that a lot of what worked in those movies was not them, it was the machine, and The Gray Man is the kind of movie that shows you the difference real fast. Ryan Gosling is a legitimately capable actor who has done some of the most interesting work of his generation in movies like Drive and Blade Runner 2049, and watching him play Sierra Six, who is essentially a walking empty vessel with good reflexes, feels like a quiet waste of a very expensive talent, the character doesnt have that momentum, no point of view, no reason to be interesting beyond the fact that Gosling is doing probably his best that cant even be notice. The movie opens with a textbook setup where Six is recruited out of a prison cell by a government guy named Fitzroy, played by Billy Bob Thornton who is doing his low key southern charmer thing, and the deal is simple, you work for us or you rot in here and then you just almost stand by for aabout twenty minutes of setup before the movie finally admits what it actually is.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1649418/
- Platform: NETFLIX
Chris Evans is basically the only thing stopping this movie from becoming pure second monitor entertaiment, Chris is the one that goes all in as Lloyd Hansen, who is a completely ridiculous villain and that full commitment is easily the most fun thing in the movie. The mustache, the sweaters, the total lack of redeeming qualities, Evans knows exactly what kind of character he is playing and you can tell the guy is just having a good time at it. The action looks impressive in a technical sense too, especially the Prague fountain sequence where the drone shots and the stunt work actually have some style and purpose behind them, you can respect the effort even when the rest of the movie is kinda meh. There is also a part of the movie where Six becomes a protector for Claire, Fitzroy’s niece, and that could have added some real emotion to the story. It is not a bad idea at all but very average movie for the amount of marketing the put into it. The problem is the movie gives it almost no room to breathe before moving on, Ana de Armas also does what she can with her role and looks like a star every time she is on screen, she is great in the action but she also gives off the energy of someone who knows she is too good for this movie.
There is this airplane scene where they just going at each other throwing hands while the entire fuselage is almost comming apart around them, that is when the movie goes full CGI overload and just start becoming bloaded, ngl it does looks expensive but its more like trying to get your attention rathern than earning your attention, like the production knew the story was not doing the job so it kept turning up the spectacle hoping nobody would notice the reason behind all the flashy CGI. The whole thing has this strange washed out colors too, like someone in post forgot to turn the saturation up and every city they blow through, Bangkok, Prague, London, looks equally flat and equally fake. Rege Jean Page shows up as the antagonist and I hate to say it because the guy has charisma in other things but every scene where he is supposed to feel menacing just sits there not doing anything, flat delivery in a flat role and the movie tries to add some actual weight to Six through flashbacks about abuse and trauma that feel like they were dropped in because someone looked at the script and said this character needs a backstory, not because anyone actually figured out what that backstory should do for the movie. The moment where Six gets a blade through his hand and keeps fighting like he caught a splinter tells you everything about the movie not really taking in consideration concequences or at least trying to stay close to reality. Gosling and Evans have exactly one scene that actually hits and it was expected to happen, its when they finally clash with eacy other, and all of the sudden it feels like this was the right direction of the movie, this is the movie that could have been made with these two if anyone had bothered to write it right.
Compared to how much Netflix spent on it against something like other Netflix originals, for example Red Notice at least knew it was empty nonsense and had a little fun with that. The Gray Man is more annoying because it takes itself way too seriously, always reaching for depth and seriousness that it never actually earns. Other similar failures like Six Underground that kinda makes me mad almost immediately with how aggressively Michael Bay was throwing chaos at the screen, so The Gray Man is better than that at least but fits just in the same hype train that never really deliver. It is more coherent got to give it, but getting over that very low bar does not automatically make it a movie I would tell anyone to watch, it remains in the lower meh range. The stunt and action work is clearly being done by people who know exactly what they are doing, and you can feel the skill in some of the fight scenes even when the story around them is completely empty. The problem is that good craft without a story behind it will always feel empty like they just doing the action scenes for the show but you really dont care about the characters and it takes the sense of danger out of it, and that is basically what this movie turns into. It is a very long, very polished vague content that somehow cost two hundred million dollars. The movie keeps piling on new cities, new characters, and new threats, but none of it really builds into anything with actual weight. By the time its past half mark of the movie, you can feel the whole thing starting to fall flat even with all the action and spectable that it kept pumping, like it kept adding more and more on top to see if it clicks or get some dopamine into your brain so you look the other side.
I walked out of this thing feeling like I had been handed a very expensive gift in a box that turned out to be completely empty, the production quality is not a problem at all and Evans alone is worth at least watching the movie once but only if you go in with total transparency about what you are getting into, but there is nothing, nothing that grabs you and keeps you interested into the movie, there is that drama and sense of character building missing as in any good action movie, you cant be in between, either you are all show or you put some intention behind it but the problem is that when they try they just make things too complicated. Evans makes Lloyd Hansen the kind of villain you want to see get his own movie where he is still a total bastard but at least he is the center of something, because watching him chew through this script is the only time The Gray Man feels like it has actual life in it. If you get to watch this movie just be aware that it feels fancy, its loud, got action into it, but its not as good as it seems, you for sure have seen worst movie so its not like its the worst movie any of this actors have done. This one lands at a 6/10 from me, my post probably feels like a rant but its just that after watching Project Hail Mary I took some interest into Gosling work, specially for any action movies he has done and it has been mention how this movie compares but it was just total bs and pure marketing hype because its been about 10 years since Blade Runner 2049 and First Man came out, yes it is watchable streaming content that you will have forgotten entirely after a week, go in with zero expectations and the Evans factor might just be enough to carry you through it. Yes this was a delayed rant on a movie from 4 years ago that I regret watching comparing to the recent highs of Gosling with Project Hail Mary.
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