Netflix’s latest action film is a stale, uninspired piece of subscription bait that is a virtual tag cloud of terms. This film’s every creative decision, from its cast to its rat-a-tat language to its standard on/off-premises concept, might have been devised by someone working in metrics. There’s just one way The Gray Man could seem more algorithmic: with Ryan Reynolds as the star. In truth, Ryan is an attractive, blonde Ryan in his early 40s who plays the lead part. In this case, it’d be Ryan Gosling, who is known for being pickier about what projects he takes on. Convict Court Gentry (James Gosling) pledges to serve the state in return for a reduced sentence in the expectation that fans would confuse this for Netflix’s 6 Underground spinoffs.
On cell-block movie night, “you’d be part of an elite team,” says his CIA recruiter (Billy Bob Thornton), who is counting on the fact that “Suicide Squad” has never made it into the cut. The storyline is trite and predictable; it’s basically generic adventure movie fare. It all comes down to Gosling’s Six deciding to defy instructions and not pull the trigger for the first time. Because of his reluctance, he finds himself with a computer chip with some damaging information about The Company. Everyone calls it “the asset,” but no one knows what it truly says.) Six flees across continents with the reluctant aid of a fellow agent after finding himself suddenly in the sights of his government superiors, including a wormy Harvard grad (Regé-Jean Page from Netflix’s Bridgerton) and an uptight mission head (Jessica Henwick from Netflix’s Iron Fist) (Ana de Armas, star of the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, coming soon to Netflix).
Ex-colleague Chris Evans, who plays yet another brawny, blonde-haired Hollywood star, takes on the role of a hired gun recruited by the villainous CIA. The film’s psychopathic antagonist is played by Evans, who might have easily taken the major part had Bong Joon-ho and Rian Johnson not previously subverted Evans’ clean-cut Captain America image with an ugly “trash stache” and smiling smarm. The Gray Man reunites Joe and Anthony Russo, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely, the creative team behind some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s heaviest and most well-liked chapters. Although Captain America: The Winter Soldier remains one of the most thrilling entries in that never-ending saga, the chaotic jitter of the set pieces staged by the Russo brothers have deteriorated into incompetence over the years. Endgame’s colour pallet appears to have been splattered with ash, making Bangkok look dismal for the first time.
Atrociously filmed skydives into digital incoherence mar the action’s clarity, which is sacrificed in favour of a phoney sense of urgency. The writing is not any better. To save Evans for the film’s climactic mano-a-mano showdown, Six knocks his vicious opponent out cold. This is a bad move that says less about Six’ changing views on killing and more about the director’s desire to retain Evans in the picture. It’s a tiring stream of fashionable arch jokes from Markus and McFeely that prioritises quantity (and speed) over quality. What passes for wit in this film is “to create an omelette, you have to kill some people.” When he keeps his mouth shut, Ryan Gosling (the ex-driver of Drive) may be very moving, but his cliched one-liners are a little harder to buy. There’s a reason why comic book superheroes give one-liners that are a lot easier to swallow than those delivered by special-ops wet workers and the uncaring suits who determine their targets.
It is almost a joke in The Gray Man about the amount of collateral harm.
The cynicism with which Hollywood has portrayed the CIA’s war crimes skulduggery is just sad. When it comes to the intelligence community, the Russos’ portrayal is so bleak and depressing that it might easily be mistaken for the military fixation of the Marvel machine. While Six is the hero of this film since he’s been dropping corpses for his nation for two decades, Evans’ character is seen as evil because of his disregard for human life. To make him likeable, the screenplay goes out of its way to include flashbacks of his relationship with an annoyingly precocious little sidekick and a family tragedy that is only revealed in the final act (Julia Butters). As good as The Gray Man is, it’s still no better than the last Russo brothers film, the hilariously pompous Apple TV+ film Cherry, in terms of its modest shoot-’em-up goals. A prestige biopic was given the Marvel treatment, and the result was a superhero movie with all the frills. In a way, they’ve done the same thing here, adding unnecessary fat to what could have been a simple DTV diversion.
However, it’s possible that was more of a directive from the all-powerful algorithm than a Russo call. According to user data, people enjoy long and costly action movies with the recognisable face of an Avenger to attract their eye when they are cooking or folding laundry. The Gray Man will premiere on Netflix on July 22 after a limited theatrical release on July 15th.