26th Jul2022

‘The Gray Man’ Review

by Alex Ginnelly

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick, Regé-Jean Page | Written by Joe Russo, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely | Directed by Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Even with all the great charisma the actors bring to the screen, there isn’t enough in The Gray Man to make it a stand-out action film. The generic Netflix action film feels like it’s only gone straight to streaming so the world won’t see how bad it bombs at the box office.

The recipe for this action film (like so many streaming has pumped out in the last few years) is to get an A-list movie star to play a man who’s the best at what he does, then get a random plot that manages to get them from set piece to set piece, all while being hunted down by every bad guy you can imagine. Every action films lately feels like it’s trying to be John Wick, but they just make me wish I was watching John Wick. Through the action they still have character and when they don’t, the action is some of the best we’ve had. Here however the action is lacklustre and generic, every action set piece feels like it’s been done bigger and better before. The quick cuts sometimes lose you in the action, there were many moments I just wished the camera would hold for a little longer so we could see the action. This also causes a problem with the geography of each scene. A few times you lose where you are in the scene and lose track of characters.

Ryan Gosling plays “Six” as according to him ‘007 was taken’. It’s one of the many whip-smart jokes Six throws around, something that Ryan Gosling plays off effortlessly and with all his charm. There are no issues here with any of the cast. Chris Evans brilliantly plays the moustache-twirling, cliched villain “Loyd”, he’s everything you’d want him to be with his performance, and tons of fun to watch. The issues however are with the characters themselves. Chris Evans is never anything more than the bad guy, he’s fun to watch but there’s nothing to get out of his character, or anyone else’s for that matter. Ryan Gosling is just the protagonist, there’s never any growth for his character or any hard choices, he never really feels like he’s in any danger either. Ana De Armas also stars as “Dani”, the third wheel to Gosling and Evans. She’s charming enough but yet again fulls into the same issues as the other characters. Characters need to grow and learn, they need arcs, they have to have wants and needs. Once we care about the characters that’s where our investment in the story comes from. Here we have none of that, there’s never a point to care about these characters, never a chance for us to really know what makes them the way they are. It’s all cheaply done for a film with such an incredible budget behind it.

With an action film sometimes you can forgive the lack of character development and storytelling in favour of the action. After all, that’s what you’ve really come for. So it’s hard to say the action is even the slightest bit exciting when The Gray Man took me two try’s to watch. On the first try I actually feel asleep, the action wasn’t enough to keep me awake, and in all my years of watching action movies that’s never happened before. Once I woke up to the films end credits rolling across the screen, I woke myself, took a few minutes and pressed that play button again. This time I managed to finish the film, and this time was just as boring as the last time.

There’s charisma and charm here, but that only comes from the actors on screen. The poor writing and directing are really what let the film down here. The boring and generic action, mixed with the same old Netflix story we’ve seen time and time again, leads to a disappointing film. There are people involved that I really admire, but they must have been taking a few days off with this one because those people can’t be found. I’m looking forward to Netflix letting us all know how this has broken all sorts of records and is one of the top streamed movies, when in reality, who knows. Maybe lots of people did put it on, but they all fell straight to sleep like I did the first time I tried.

** 2/5

The Gray Man is on Netflix now.

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