Delayed Reaction: The Gray Man

Premise: A CIA assassin becomes the hunted when he gets ahold of some important intel that the agency doesn’t want him to have.

 

OK. This is a real movie.

 

That’s in contract to my constant complaint with Netflix movies. So many of them either seem like they were made by an algorithm or were clearly an idea that no one else wanted. Very rarely do I watch a Netflix movie and regret that I didn’t get to see it on the big screen. Nowhere has that been truer than their blockbuster offerings. The best-case scenario for their big action movies tends to be that they feel like action movies that bombed in theaters. For example, let’s take two Chris Hemsworth movies: Extraction and 12 Strong. One was an underwhelming theatrical release. The other was a massive hit for Netflix that broke records at the time. And there’s a good chance the average person couldn’t tell me which is which. I can more succinctly say it like this: How many Netflix movies would’ve made $100 million if they were properly released in theaters? I’d argue none, or maybe Red Notice barely.

 

While far from a perfect movie, The Gray Man feels like a proper action movie. Netflix reportedly spent $200 million to make it. They brought in Infinity War and Endgame directors the Russo Brothers and collected a group of stars and future stars for it. And I was genuinely disappointed that I couldn’t watch this on the big screen, in a dark theater, with overpriced concessions.

 

All that said, this does feel a lot more like The Tomorrow War (an aspiring blockbuster with a 9-digit budget that Paramount dumped to Amazon who released it exclusively on Prime) than a Fast and Furious or Mission: Impossible. Part of that is due to familiar IP driving the box office, but a lot of it is because The Gray Man lacks a clear hook. The Russos, while very good at blockbusters, aren’t a draw by themselves like a Christopher Nolan. The cast is pretty brilliant. A-listers like Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Breakout talents like Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick, and Rege-Jean Page. Overqualified veterans like Billy Bob Thornton and Alfre Woodard. Hell, when they needed a kid for the movie, they got the little girl from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood who people wanted to get an Oscar nomination for (Julia Butters). In 1996, this is the formula for a Mission: Impossible-sized hit. Unfortunately, these days, a good cast is something audiences are happy about when they start watching but not the draw itself. Down to the name - The Gray Man - this movie does feel pretty anonymous. It’s a spy action movie about assassins. There are many, many movies like this. It’s hard to say how this is all that different from The 355 just this year.

 

I’m a bit torn on the cast. Technically, I like what everyone is doing. Ryan Gosling playing his Drive character by way of his The Nice Guys character is delightful. He’s a good movie star, but without anything intriguing about his character to play off, all he’s really left with is generic quipping here. Chris Evans is excellent as a cocky antagonist. That alone isn’t really enough though. He already had Knives Out to remind people that Captain America is actually at his best as an aggro jerk. “Chris Evans as villain” isn’t that intriguing on its own. I like Ana de Armas getting to follow up on the action-star tease we got in No Time to Die. She has a similarly generic spy character though.

 

Despite all my negativity so far, I really did enjoy this movie. I like the cast full of actors doing things they are good at. The Russos know how to use $200 million for an action movie. There are a variety of fun set pieces. It’s less reliant on CGI than their Marvel work, and I like the tactility of the punches and explosions. In terms of delivering an entertaining blockbuster movie, I think it’s a resounding success. The problem I have with it is that it’s so anonymous. This is the kind of movie I could watch a sequel of and not realize that it’s a sequel*.

 

*What’s the franchise? Gosling’s Six character? Hardly. Tell me one detail about him.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend