The Gray Man
Performers elevate rote espionage action-thriller when given the opportunity.
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I was super-stoked for “The Gray Man” (currently in select theaters and available to stream exclusively on Netflix beginning Friday, July 22) on paper.
The Russo brothers have directed the inspired paintball episodes of my beloved “Community” and a few of the better Marvel Cinematic Universe entries (“Avengers: Endgame” and “Captain America: Civil War” spring to mind). Ryan Gosling is one of my favorite working actors. I was hype to see Chris Evans and Ana de Armas reunited after “Knives Out.” I was excited to see more work from Julia Butters after her inspired turn in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.” I genuinely enjoy espionage action-thrillers along the lines Bond, Bourne and Missions: Impossible from which “The Gray Man” is shamelessly aped. Unfortunately, all these varied elements don’t congeal into a cohesive whole.
Gosling stars as Court Gentry aka Sierra Six. Six is plucked from prison in the early aughts by CIA spook Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) after having served almost a decade for murdering his abusive Dad (a cameoing Shea Whigham).
Fitzroy is forced into retirement by Ivy League-educated CIA upstarts Denny Carmichael (“Bridgerton” breakout Regé-Jean Page) and Suzanne Brewer (Jessica Henwick – she was Bugs in “The Matrix Resurrections”). Carmichael and Brewer see the Sierra Program, in which prisoners are released from jail to be anonymous hitters on the CIA’s behalf, as antiquated. So antiquated in fact, they commission Six to decommission fellow program participant Dining Car aka Two (“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” vet Callan Mulvey).
Unbeknownst to Six, the next neck on the chopping block is his own. Carmichael and Brewer have encouraged Six’s colleague Dani Miranda (de Armas) to drop a dime on him … something she refuses to do. The industrious/insidious agents then task CIA washout-turned-private contractor Lloyd Hansen (Evans) with dispatching their hatchet man. Hansen’s totally unhinged and goes so far as to kidnapping Fitzroy and his niece Claire (Butters) in order to force Six’s hand.
I wanted so very much to like “The Gray Man” and to a certain extent I did, but a lot of it feels so damned plasticine. A lot of the action is overly reliant on CGI … with the only real reprieve being a mid-movie chase scene/shoot-out that called to mind a similar sequence in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”
The script by fellow MCU staples Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely working alongside co-director Joe Russo is an adaptation of Mark Greaney’s 2009 novel of the same name. Despite sporting some solid zingers (most of ‘em delivered by Evans’ Hansen), the text is pretty thin. It’s an action scene delivery service where the action ain’t that great and is frequently undercut by its phoniness.
The acting often elevates the proceedings, but some talented performers are sadly left out in the cold. Gosling continues his streak of being one of our very best jacket actors. No one wears a suit or a jacket on screen as well as Gosling does – and he sports a cool one here. The very best elements come from interplay between Gosling’s Six and Butters’ Claire – they are the movie’s minimalist heart with an assist from an underused Thornton. Evans’ Hansen is fun, but one-note. De Armas is given next to nothing to do, but it’s fun to watch her go apeshit with a grenade launcher in the late goings. Page and Henwick’s characters are so uninteresting that I mostly focused on Henwick’s 1990s Mom Haircut during their exposition dump sequences at HQ.
The espionage subgenre is often rife with mystery and suspense – in the case of “The Gray Man” I’m mostly just curious where Netflix’s $200 million went?