The Gray Man

 This review may contain spoilers!

 

The Gray Man follows Six, an elite off the books agent for the CIA who specialises in wet work (assassinations) in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. However, things go bad for Six when a job goes awry and he discovers his handlers in this CIA are far more crooked than he expected. This film really excels when the conflict becomes real, when our protagonist finds himself in a situation truly desperate and hard to get out of. This is most true of the initial hostage recovery scenes in the climactic final act, in which we have Six doing his best to escort the hostages out while under fire and Dani darts below laying siege to Lloyd's HQ.

 

Jessica Henwick, who played Suzanne Brewer, really is interesting as the voice of reason within the CIA top brass; the way Henwick has to play combative and horrified as Evans goes further off the books is really well done. Regé-Jean Page, who played Carmichael, is a great contrast to Henwick; Page is explosive as a CIA leader with a serious malicious streak.

However, the best performance came from Ryan Gosling, who played Six. As a protagonist Gosling is more than adept at carrying a role through a film in way that is interesting and dynamic. When we first confront Six he seems detached, professional but very emotionally distant from what he does. But that impression is shattered when Gosling shows the moral boundaries his role won't cross, in this example attempting an assassination with a child at risk. He takes on this very doggedly determined streak from here, becoming an unrelenting force forward to escape the world and situation he finds himself in. I like how world weary Six feels, Gosling portrays this guy as having no pleasure in the role he takes at all. Time and again Six swings into action on the sheer motivation of his moral compass. So seeing him blindly pursue Butters' Claire in the hope of saving her life is a simple but excellent guiding point. Plus Gosling really delivers dry, sarcastic humour exceedingly well in his action heroes.

The Gray Man is an action movie that likes to rush and constantly signal what it's about to do before it does it. The very first scene of the film is a lot of tell not show; we learn Six is in prison (a bad place) but he's only in there because he did 'the right thing'; because of this a man from the CIA recruits him to be part of his super secret elite ops team: Sierra. It's a move that gives you everything without actually making it seem interesting, more than this it summarises how Six's motives and personality are going to work for the entire film. This sort of thing happens a lot; Six finds incriminating evidence of the CIA director but chooses to go AWOL before he even knows it's incriminating, the niece of Six's mentor gets kidnapped and the film tacks on a flashback to reveal that Six and Claire had a personal connection, we get a very generic child abuse backstory for Six that justifies his earlier prison setting. The film wants to push Six and Lloyd into fights together, that's the whole thing but any time the story needs to be told it takes no time being subtle. There's a moment where mercenaries, either working for or against the CIA have a broad daylight shoot out in Prague; a scene that I struggle with because instead of shooting at a handcuffed Six (their collective target) they literally shoot at one another, the police or random civilians instead. It's entirely about forgin ahead, while also making Six the ultra-elite agent who cannot be touched. Eventually we finally get a bare knuckle brawl between Six and Lloyd right at the end of the final fight, but even this becomes a bit of an anti-climax. Rather than Six gaining a decisive victory over Lloyd, one of the CIA directors shoots our antagonist during the struggle which ends the big final confrontation. Just presenting an unconventional government agent gone rogue against some colourful antagonists isn't enough, the plot has to be there to support those ideas.

The visual style of this thing is such a confusing affair. The first two acts are shot with a lot of the same blocky wides, and the number of repetitive tracking shots show a lack of creative vision. Yet somehow things get worse when the film really decides to experiment with new drone shooting technology; earlier in the year I suffered with this while watching Ambulance and seeing it peppered throughout The Gray Man felt equally ugly. The special effects seen throughout never really come to life, in fact the scene where Six falls out of place looks horrendous and they used a lot of blurred cutting and cutting to black to work around this. The score for the film is very generic, fast-paced in the action and without presence most other times. I also found the soundtrack to be a little dull, playing 'Silver Bird' by Mark Lindsay on the record player for two action scenes must've looked better on paper than it played in the film.

Chris Evans, who played Lloyd Hansen, is what I imagine we would've gotten if he'd really gone over the top in Knives Out; Evans playing glib and aloof baddie with no moral compass should be fun but he went very over the top with it. Ana de Armas, who played Dani Miranda, is quite a bland character who doesn't always fit into the main narrative well; connecting her story with Gosling's in the back half of the film didn't really work as well as it could've. Billy Bob Thornton, who played Fitzroy, otherwise doesn't really care/want to be in this film or gives no range to his performance; there is never a moment the film made me believe he actually cared for any of the characters he had a relationship with. Dhanush, who played Avik San, is this very expressionless mercenary than feels little more than a stunt-focused henchman role; Dhanush's portrayal of a mercenary with a moral code right in his final scenes is quite corny. Alfre Woodard, who played Margaret Cahill, is another CIA leader introduced really suddenly through flashbacks to enhance Six's story with Claire; seeing Woodard play this retired figure spouting exposition felt like a waste of fine talent. Wagner Moura, who played Laszlo Sosa, is a wild performance that never finds a grounding point; Moura is all over the place in his scene and probably rattles off more than his character really needs as far as screen time goes. Julia Butters, who played Claire, certainly gives her all but it does come across a bit stilted; Butters' delivery often feels like she's learned the lines as opposed to portraying a role.

Imagine going from making the second highest grossing film of all time to making this. I would give The Gray Man a 2.5/10.