Anthony Russo and Joe Russo are great at shooting action sequences, but little else about The Gray Man feels original.
Chris Evans, Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas do everything they can to rise about the predictable cat-and-mouse story. The Gray Man appears to be a spy-vs-spy battle between Gosling’s Six and Evans’s Lloyd Hansen. Sadly Gosling and Evans are rarely on screen together. Gosling and Evans are fun opposite each other, it just needed to happen more often.
Armas is terrific as Dani Miranda. No Time to Die was an effective tease of Armas’s action chops. The Gray Man is Armas unleashed.
The Gray Man is a bulldozer of a spy thriller. Story beats are laid out in Six’s opening mission. Essentially Six was plucked out of prison by Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) to take on a dangerous, off-the-books mission in exchange for commuting his sentence. Think the Treadstone project in the Bourne franchise. Fitzroy’s replacement, Carmichael, played by Regé-Jean Page, is looking to clear out this out-of-touch program. Carmichael hires Lloyd to take care of the problem by any means necessary.
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The Russo brothers’ action directing chops and a trio of great performances are the highlights of The Gray Man. Unfortunately, everything about the story is just a mismash of spy stories that have been done better.
With the overview out of the way, let’s dive deeper into the elements that stood out in The Gray Man. There may be some minor spoilers. The Gray Man is available to stream on Netflix.
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The Sierra Progam
The Gray Man opens with Six and Fitzroy meeting for the first time in prison. Six was arrested for killing his father. Fitzroy makes Six a simple offer. Work for the CIA for as long as Six can and he will commute his prison sentence.
Fast forward a few years. Fitzroy was forced out of his position by Carmichael. A rising star who wants to eliminate the Sierra program. Six is on a mission in Europe with agent Miranda. Carmichael orders Six to takeout a target from distance. There are children in the vicinity. Six hesitates and decides to take an up close and personal approach.
He comes face-to-face with another member of the Sierra program, Four. He carries out the assignment but takes a thumb drive that will spell bad news for Carmichael. From this point forward, Carmichael is hell-bent on finding and killing Six.
Spy games in The Gray Man
Carmichael calls in Hansen. A Sierra project washout, Hansen, was deemed too dangerous and sadistic for a program full of criminals. Hanson does all of Carmichael’s dirty work and sets out to capture Six. Evans is having a blast as a literal mustache-twirling villain. He spends most of the film verbally sparring with and torturing Thornton’s Fitzroy. Every frame featuring Evans and Gosling opposite each other is fantastic. There are simply not enough scenes between these two actors. Hanson is content to send out wave after wave of agents until the end of the film.
Gosling’s Six is a man of few words with just the slightest hint of morality. He tends to make quite the mess. Six clearly has a soft spot for kids and is still connected to Fitzroy. Eventually, Hanson forces Fitzroy to give up Six’s location. He knows where Fitzroy’s niece is, which leads to a short pause in the relentless action.
Agent Miranda decides to team up with Six after Carmichael suspends her. The lack of intelligence gathering on display in The Gray Man is astonishing. Once he cuts her loose, she essentially has no choice of but to team up with Six in order to figure out what’s going on with the Sierra program. Agent Miranda does just that.
Finding the heart
The only other subplot involves Fitzroy’s niece. Fitzroy sends Six to watch over his niece, Claire. She has a heart monitor and the kidnapping attempt could put her a risk.
Six tries to keep Claire at arm’s length. Fortunately, she does start to wear him down. The connection Six forges with Claire changes his character’s motivation. Before meeting Claire, his focus was to help Fitzroy while he finds a way to get to Hansen. After Claire is kidnapped, Six’s motivation is more personable and gives The Gray Man some semblance of emotional stakes.
The Gray Man becomes a non-stop action film once Clair is kidnapped. If there’s an opportunity for subtlety in The Gray Man, the Russo brothers ignore it. The screenplay doesn’t bother trying to dive deep into any character in the film.
The Gray Man Final Thoughts
If anybody but Gosling, Evans or Armas weren’t playing these roles, The Gray Man would be a waste. Luckily, those performances offer just enough to make the film watchable, the action sequences are intense and every frame is gorgeous. There’s an interesting story to be told about the Sierra program, but that’s not the direction of this film.
The Review
The Gray Man
PROS
- Chris Evans, Ana de Armas and Ryan Gosling are fantastic.
- The action sequences are well executed.
- Beautiful cinematography.
CONS
- Relentless pacing makes it difficult to care about what's happening on screen.
- Shallow characters.
- Not enough scenes between Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling.
