Netflix continues its cinematic-streaming collaboration shtick with The Gray Man. The platform spent the latter part of 2021 doing this thing where it drops its original works in cinemas for a week or two, before putting it on its subscription base. The Gray Man is helmed by the Russo brothers, who have previous on the streaming service, with the Chris Hemsworth-led Extraction, which shot its way to being the service’s most watched movie at the start of lockdown in 2020.
With The Gray Man, they employ another Chris who’s starred in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in Evans. This time Evans’ appearance in an action flick with a source material sees him ditch his heroic suit for a villainous polo shirt, alongside Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, and Netflix darling Rege Jean-Page, in what is the platform’s most expensive production, surpassing works like Red Notice and The Irishman.
The Good:
I’m not the best fan of any action star version of Ryan Gosling. Give me cheeky finance baddie from The Big Short, or slick romantic Gosling anytime any day. Of course, Gosling has had appearances in action pics before now, but the biggest one that comes to (my) mind, Blade Runner 2049, is more visual than action, and is no way as extravagant as this. Yet, this version of Gosling is quite fun to watch, as his performance as the dead-eyed, ruthless, and unyielding rogue catches the eye. It’s not necessarily the best, but it sure it captivating, and he makes even the cheap retorts work.
The action is the best bit of The Gray Man, without any doubt. Not just the choreography of it, but the cinematographic features as well; the Prague sequence from apartment to road via train is such a good watch, even if it seems to go on forever.
Sadly, this movie doesn’t have much else to cover itself in glory.
The Bad:
The Gray Man is adapted from the book by Mark Greaney, an author who’s literarily chummy with Tom Clancy, so, you should get a sense of where it’s going. The CIA nonsense, that depicts that agency as morally decent, so much so that there’s an unethical bit that tarnishes its image, and also the fact that the unethical bits are mostly that because they’re unsanctioned, not even because they’re bad. But let’s pretend for a second that the CIA is not a T-word organisation, buy into the necessary evil thing, and say that this love letter of a movie accurately depicts its ethics. Those are not even the flaws to point out here.
First off, The Gray Man fails with dialogue. To say its dialogue is cheap or lazy would be sugar-coating it. Its cliched, unoriginal, and boring. It is far too automated, like its more intent on good guy and bad guy having immediate and clever retorts that actual people just talking. So much of this movie feels like a kind of dehumanisation, nothing about the people on screen feels real, and the dialogue reflects that.
As a story, it also misses its mark, by a margin too. The Gray Man seems like a sequel, or at least starts like the middle of a film, too familiar too soon, and it just goes with it. So many character interactions are things the audience have no awareness of, and at the same time, we’re expected to identify with whatever emotional connection they have. This movie takes having two flashback scenes with no life as a backstory, and tells the audience to get it. Not to mention a final act that goes on for far too long.
Then there’s Chris Evans, who possesses no true flair to be a sociopathic villain, other than ‘look at me, I’m very bad, and I have cheeky quips. It’s like if the Captain America version of him got split into two personalities, and one of them had nothing but exhaustingly cheap rhetoric. The Gray Man set out for an antagonist that would be funny, yet not likeable, one who revels in his darkness, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing. And for a story that sells its bad guy as one who gets the job done no matter the collateral damage, it’s quite something to mostly see him watch from afar as he keeps failing.
In the shorter form, a lot of The Gray Man wreaks of bad writing.
The Ugly:
The CIA nonsense, that depicts that agency as morally decent, so much so that there’s an unethical bit that tarnishes its image, and the fact that the unethical are mostly that because they’re unsanctioned. Obviously.
Conclusion:
Netflix has stated its intent on having its own original franchise and cinematic universe kind of works. There’s the sense that, with the source material and the budget of this movie, as well as the conclusion, The Gray Man might be one of those. But it doesn’t look like a good one, which speaks to the age of film-making, whereby a lot is geared towards algorithmic content with familiar faces heavily seeking fan service, and little towards actually making a good film.
Netflix says it won’t spend on extravagant projects anymore, citing The Irishman as an example. I wonder what they’d think The Gray Man is.
On About Nothing Rating: 4.5/10
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