The Gray Man Movie Review | Russo Brothers | Dhanush | Ryan Gosling

The Gray Man Movie Review | Russo Brothers | Dhanush | Ryan Gosling

Hello, and welcome we’re going to be talking about Anthony and Joe Russo’s The Gray Man, which is now on Netflix. The film stars Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, ana De Armas and our very own Danish.

Now in concept, Antonio and Jerusalem, the Grey Man is a welcome change from their Avengers films. In an age of incessant computer-generated visual effects and combat, the Gray Man is more in the tradition of the Bond films.

The Bone films. The Mission Impossible films. It’s a relief. We actually hear bones crack and break. We actually see blood from a face that’s been smashed to pulp. We know the hero Ryan Gosling will win, but he doesn’t have any superpowers except a sharp mind and sharp reflexes and a lot of training.

So when I say The Gray Man is essentially a series of action set pieces, it is not a complaint. Exactly. As a concept, we could use more of these movies where the action is not fixed. Whether it is Ryan Gosling himself or whether it is a stunt double, someone is kicking us or getting his ass kicked.

This is a very primal pleasure. It’s like, I don’t know, watching a gladiator, a spectacle in the comfort of a movie theater. But what The Gray Man forgets is that this concept needs at least a bit of good writing between the action.

The writing is the glue that binds these separate action pieces, the action set pieces. Take the character played by Danish. She is one of the numerous assassins employed by the villain Chris Evans. And this Dunno’s character is the best of the bunch.

He’s the most well-defined of the bunch. He’s called Lone Wolf because, unlike others, he operates alone. But Zenkiller would probably be an equally appropriate name. He’s first seen with meditation beads, and he’s last seen delivering a line that shows that he believes in a code of conduct even between bad men.

Do you know the phrase honor between thieves? Something like that. He believes in honor. How fascinating it would have been had this character been fleshed out like the loner assassin played by Alan Delaw in La Samurai, but in two speeds, of course.

Or take Ryan Gosling himself, the gray man of the title. At first, we see him in Florida State prison. He has had a bad childhood with a bad father, and when he’s released and recruited by a CIA agent, played by Billy Bob Thornton.

And it would make sense that this character, that is, this Billy Bob Thornton’s character, becomes the father figure our hero never had. And later, a childhood memory of abuse helps this hero break the cycle of patriarchal violence.

These beats, these bits of writing blue do exist, but not in a way that adds shade or depth. Instead, the film takes the easy way out by having a little girl Billy Bob fountain’s knees in constant danger, a son breaking a father’s crushing psychological hold over him while being chased by constant attacks by assassins, versus a little girl who needs to be protected, which is the cutest subplot, right?

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So, no, I’m not asking for a deep movie. I’m just saying I would have liked to identify with the characters a little more in the way I wrote for John Wick, in the way I wrote for Ethan Hunt, because those films imbue these characters with a little quirk here and there, even in the middle of all the action.

Otherwise, what’s the use of giving people traits if you don’t follow up on these traits or if you’re just going to give a semblance of depth? So what we get is a fairly watchable action movie without a single moment that stays in mind, the minute to exit the screening.

The Gray Man has a lot of globe-trotting, it has a lot of charismatic stars, including Anna and Alfred Uddar. It has decent stunts, but nobody and nothing are particularly original. Not a single moment makes you go, wow.

Now, allow me a little digression at the end. I know this is not an exact comparison, but because of the film’s premise of a man being hunted by rogue government agents, I kept thinking back about Hollywood.
Great. Man versus system thrillers like Sydney Pollacks. Three Days of the Condor, for instance. Now, these thrillers, they spoke about the man, they spoke about the system. They had action and they were uniquely American.

But posted the 1980s when Hollywood started looking at global audiences, the uniqueness got lost. I guess that’s why most action movies today end up being little more than watchable. Those earlier films were like X-rays of a nation’s paranoia.

These new ones are content to be amusement park rides. The sense of danger you got from those earlier films and the sense of danger that you seek in these movies is that of a gun pressed into your temple.
The sense of danger that you actually get is that of a roller coaster taking a big dip. So that’s it for the Gray man