If you loved him as the lusciously sweatered, duplicitous douche in Knives Out, you'll appreciate his distinctive turn as Lloyd Hansen, a gleeful killer with the trash 'stache of a Boston cop and the casual wear of a Wall Street dirtbag. Like his MCU bud Chris Hemsworth in Spiderhead, Chris Evans seems to relish the opportunity to slide into a baddie role. Chris Evans is wicked fun as a mustachioed villain.ĭo you like the mustache? Be honest! Credit: Paul Abell/Netflix Without all the razzle-dazzle of sparks and swish pans, de Armas and her onscreen enemy deliver a brief but satisfying battle that actually thrills. There are a few notable moments where the coverage and the edit actually click, and the fight scene that stands out the most is a simple affair involving a man, a woman, a table, and a cable. It's practically the exact opposite experience of watching (and hearing) Jordan Peele's Nope in terms of communicating carnage through sound rather than relying on graphic onscreen violence. In The Gray Man, you'll see each punch, stab, and bullet biting into flesh, but without a sound design that squelches hard, these injuries seem minor, even when the characters are bleeding profusely. His lunges are ramped up in the edit, so the punches and kicks should feel more forceful, but the feeble sound design deadens the impact. Gosling's numerous battles are often obscured by distractions: a flashlight's beam bopping about a dark room, smoke bombs billowing around the battlers, or actual fireworks exploding around warring rivals. Even sequences with less moving parts suffer from the Russos' determination to overstimulate their audience. This turns several fight scenes, including a sprawling, city-smashing car chase, into an illogical blur. The Russos seem to know these sequences fall flat as if to distract us, the editing is especially frenetic, bounding from location to location without concern for visual flow or spatial geography. There are plenty of fight scenes, but the actual fight choreography is frequently uninspired hand-to-hand combat. Sadly, the frantic pacing and hasty edit of the film, which nonetheless clocks in at a grueling two hours and nine minutes, make The Gray Man an eyesore. Hell, even the MacGuffin - a flash drive hidden in a medallion - is golden. Despite its title, which is meant to refer to the moral gray area that Six works in, the film is alive with color: neon-lit nightclubs, a bespoke suit in brilliant vermillion, sprays of yellow and red light in fireworks and gunfire, and teal backlighting that brings contrast to shadowy fight scenes. To the Russos' credit, they try to dress up this ruthless retread with a globe-trekking journey that bounces between beautiful settings, like Bangkok, Berlin, Baku, and Monaco.
She was Taken by a mercurial mercenary (Evans), so Six and his "particular set of skills" are on a mission to get the girl, save the day, and limp off into the sunset, maybe with his pretty female colleague (de Armas). And along the way, he'll do his own (less impressive) version of the Oldboy hallway melee.įrom its first scene, it's hard not to feel like you've seen The Gray Man before. Like Léon: The Professional, he's trying to best the baddies while protecting a young orphan girl (Julia Butters) from harm. Like John Wick, a huge bounty is put on his head, sending a swarm of killers on his tail. Like the Bourne franchise or Black Widow, he goes on the run to preserve his life and bring the shady organization down. Like The Bourne Identity, this highly trained assassin falls out of the organization's good graces when he botches a hit to save a child bystander. Like Suicide Squad, Six (Gosling) is a "hardened criminal" who is let out of prison to go on top-secret assassination assignments for a shady government organization. Written by Joe Russo, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely, The Gray Man is based on a novel of the same name by bestselling author Mark Greaney, but the movie's plot points seem nakedly stolen from a slew of memorable action films. Instead, it feels like a mixtape, pulling bits from a bunch of much better, much more daring action movies, to create a medley that is mediocre at best. Despite all this, The Gray Man fails to be solidly fun. MCU juggernauts Joe and Anthony Russo share directing duties, promising splashy stunts to take advantage of the ludicrous budgets Netflix drops for such star-studded projects. Knives Out 's Ana de Armas and Chris Evans reunite for another showdown of wits and, this time, plenty of combat. Drive 's glowering Ryan Gosling stars as the titular anti-hero, a hired assassin with a heart of gold. At a glance, The Gray Man has everything you'd crave in a high-octane action movie.
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