48 % on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 205 reviews)
Runtime: 122 minutes
Directed by: The Russo Brothers
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Billy Bob Thornton, Dhanush
From: Netflix
You know, I don’t regret this being my first Russo Brothers movie, even if I discovered that “nonstop drone shots” is apparently a director trademark w/ them. I know, that will be a stunning admission to many (there is a small category of middle-aged adults who doesn’t really care for superhero films in general, and moi resides in said category) but then again I am someone who hasn’t subscribed to Netflix in almost a year. While I have the service, at least one Indian movie will be watched-as there are a few mutuals whose viewing habits is filled with pictures from that universe-along with whatever else strikes my fancy. By now I’ve definitely heard plenty of negative reviews here on Letterboxd for The Gray Man, or at least those that proclaim how mediocre it is. The alleged $200 budget and how it was used was a source of much derision.
Another comment I’ve heard is that this is rather generic; admittedly, a plot description of “a CIA mercenary accidentally discovers the agency’s dark secrets so the agency sends assets to assassinate the mercenary” is something to be expected in a DTV action movie from any era. The end result: it reminds me why many modern movies just leave me cold. This had no shortage of traits that are a turn-off: putrid dialogue, action that could be cool but too often is incoherent, bad editing, poor storytelling, plotholes galore, bad CGI (that even affected the fight scenes although the nadir of that was during a plane sequence that was just illogical in general)and lame-ass villains. In this case, the villains part is partially true… Chris Evans as Lloyd was at least amusing although I didn’t love all of his dialogue by any means and he was no Bennett from Commando; the character of Carmichael, though… he was such a lame and laughable bad guy instead of menacing and frightful. I don’t blame the actor Rege-Jean Page, I blame the script.
The cast as a whole was at least fine; it was nice to see the old faces along with watching some for the first time; I’m referring to Jessica Henwick in a rather thankless role (I’d rather not experience either Iron Fist or that poor attempt at mining The Matrix name to see her acting talents), or Tamil actor Dhanush; he was impressive with not a lot of screentime. In the “Chenny” role was Julia Butters and color me thankful that her “child in peril” role was not as irritating as it could have been; plus, it was rather inspired that a 12 year old was a hipster who listened to records of ABBA, Shirley Bassey & Mark Lindsay.
If only the rest of this would have been as interesting (and I don’t mean interesting in a bad way like Only God Forgives was! Yes I did have nightmarish flashbacks during the opening scenes w/ Ryan Gosling in Bangkok)… instead it’s a shallow story and slight entertainment which is set in many exotic locations but is rather forgettable and my “meh” rating probably means that in the grand scheme of things, I’d rate it higher than the glut of high budget made for Netflix pictures which I presume are mostly lousy. While I could laugh at the homoerotic scene between Gosling and Evans (but it never reached the degree of John Matrix and Bennett), what an awful final 10 or so minutes that almost sank my opinion of this entirely. A franchise, I don’t need this to be.
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