The Gray Man

'The Gray Man' review: Netflix wastes the talents of Ryan Gosling in its new action movie, which also stars Chris Evans. Read on Boston.com.

Though action movies are always more fun on the big screen, “The Gray Man” isn’t quite good enough to be a theatrical must-see. There’s also a tossed-in subplot involving the teenage daughter of Thornton’s retired CIA honcho that tries to humanize Six that doesn’t really work and isn’t needed. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo (“Avengers: Endgame”) have been given a proverbial blank check by Netflix, and they have left it all on the screen. Sporting a villainous mustache, Evans smirks his way through the movie, spouting intentionally hackneyed line-readings like “Make him dead.” In the film’s tone-setting opening sequence, Gosling’s CIA hitman (known only as “Six”) battles a target on a rooftop that is launching thousands of fireworks, preparing viewers for the concussive, eye-popping film to come. But when he obtains incriminating evidence against a corrupt CIA bureaucrat (Regé-Jean Page, “Bridgeton”), Six goes from hitman to target.

Netflix's The Gray Man borrows from a slew of secret-agent thrillers, but doesn't match them in quality, writes Nicholas Barber.

The result is a film that never seems to know what it's doing, or why. The characters always have smarmy comebacks at the ready (although they're witty without being funny), the ever-cool Gosling raises a smile by treating the violence as a mildly irritating inconvenience, and Evans is entertainingly horrible as a sadistic sociopath. This, then, could be the ideal moment for a new cinematic secret agent – and The Gray Man seems to be the man for the job. The one-dimensionally evil Carmichael calls in a one-dimensionally crazy contractor called Lloyd (Chris Evans with a moustache) to retrieve the doohickey and to bump off Six, and Lloyd in turn calls in every team of assassins in his little black book. It's fair to say that Greaney's idea of Six being a mysterious figure who can slip into the shadows, unnoticed by anyone, has been abandoned in favour of absurdly over-the-top mayhem, so if you enjoy seeing planes, cars and buildings being blown up in a fake-looking way, then The Gray Man will pass the time. The truly hackneyed part is that Six is on the run from the very people who trained him.

'The Gray Man,' starring Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, is another big-budget Netflix movie that feels like it's just playacting as a Hollywood ...

Granted, the swift disappearance of specific genres (like the rom-com) has left critics and pundits (mea culpa) willing to relish a new offering (like Marry Me) precisely because it feels flash-frozen from another era. However, as shown from Extraction (which positioned Hemsworth as the secondary lead in the action climax) and 21 Bridges (which had a Sydney Lumet-worthy distrust of cops and awareness of systemic corruption), you can make a throwback that doesn’t feel like a relic. While the stunts look practical and the scale is impressive, the editing and staging render much of the showdowns painfully chaotic. Rising star Julia Butters holds her own even though she is quickly made a full-time hostage/damsel. Perhaps by default, the attempt by this film to recapture the glory days of the Hollywood action movie can’t help but revert to past-their-time tropes and cliches. The film spins itself silly to make it feel expansive while burying its simple plot (the good guy must save his mentor and the mentor’s niece and kill the bad guy) under a deluge of misdirection and internal confusion. While we don’t have much reason to root for Court Gentry (Gosling) beyond the “he avoids collateral damage” variable, the curtain-raiser offers travelogue locales and plenty of colorful momentum as our hero improvises but gets into a brawl with his target.

You can actually feel your Netflix subscription getting more expensive as Ryan Gosling & Chris Evans fight across this dull Bourne knockoff.

Not unlike the setpieces in the Russos’ “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” most of the fights here are just visceral and compelling enough to hit you over the head with their untapped potential. Perhaps they’ll become more compelling in future installments — a sequel is already in the works — but that’s little consolation after sitting through an entire movie that needs Court’s search for Fitzroy’s kidnapped niece to double as a chance for self-discovery. The Tamil star Dhanush — who drops into “The Gray Man” for just long enough to make you wish you were watching a more colorful kind of blockbuster — doesn’t even stick around for the finale. Alas, with the possible exception of his stint as Buzz Lightyear and that one scene in “Snowpiercer” where he monologues about eating babies, Evans has never been flatter or less funny than he is here. Most demented action movie antagonists roll up wearing a suit or some kind of function-oriented body armor, but not Lloyd. No, Lloyd stalks Court from Baku to Berlin dressed like he’s on his way to a key party in suburban Connecticut circa 1973, complete with skin-tight knit polos, butt-hugging slacks, and an endless supply of smarmy one-liners like “Make him dead,” and everyone’s favorite, already immortalized in the trailer: “If you want to make an omelet, you gotta kill some people.” At one point he chides someone for saying “preternatural,” because “that’s an asshole word.” It’s like watching Captain America cosplay as Vince Vaughn in a performance that feels like he’s constantly looking for a chance to stick his tongue into someone’s ear. When the film cuts forward to the present, we find that the CIA has neutered the once-pugnacious Court into a dead-behind-the-eyes murder drone who does what he’s told, with most of his orders coming from the transparently corrupt shitbag who replaced the retired Fitzroy as head of the Sierra program (Denny Carmichael is played by “Bridgerton” sensation Regé-Jean Page, miserable in the role of a gallingly basic villain who ends most of his scenes by throwing a cup or a plate at his office wall in frustration). And this time, the call he gets from his future self is coming from inside the house, or at least from another room in the Bangkok skyscraper where Court has been dispatched to assassinate Sierra Four, a fellow mercenary in the black ops program that recruited Court out of prison and offered him “freedom” in exchange for a lifetime of doing America’s dirty work. Well, that proves easier said than done — even after Carmichael kidnaps Fitzroy’s pre-teen niece, played by “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” highlight Julia Butters — leaving the CIA is left no choice but to bust out the big guns and hire Chris Evans’ psychopathic mercenary, Lloyd Hansen. So begins a “blockbuster” so big that you can actually feel the price of your Netflix subscription going up with each new scene, this listless simulacrum of a summer action movie bouncing from one lavish Asian or European location to the next as it searches in vain for the streamer’s first bonafide popcorn franchise. To that point, my very first thought during “The Gray Man” was how good it is to hear Gosling’s voice again. Where that film used all of its muscle to squeeze an ounce of chemistry from a cast of human brands, this one seems perversely determined not to distill even the faintest trace of charisma from some of the world’s most winning stars, exciting new talents, and veteran character actors. Yes, Evans still spends most of this movie threatening people over the phone, but here he’s been cast as the bad guy; it’s Ryan Gosling who’s been cast in the Cole Hazard role, the iconic “Barbie Set Photos” star playing CIA killer Court Gentry (codename: Sierra Six).

Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans star in an action extravaganza — the most expensive Netflix movie to date — that feels made to be watched in the background ...

The Gray Man wraps up the way a TV pilot would, with shockingly little resolution and most of the characters returned to their starting positions to do this all over again in the inevitable sequel. The Russos may have been responsible for one of the better fight scenes in the MCU, in the elevator in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but here, they stage prolonged action sequences on a crashing plane and a moving tram that are boosted with sloppy computer-generated work and so little sense of where the characters are in relation to the spaces they’re in that there’s no tension at all. The movie spends a lot of time in a tonal purgatory where it’s never clear if it’s meant to be funny, and while its banter isn’t generally good enough for that to matter, it does end up undercutting the best gag, which is that Lloyd and Carmichael met not doing untoward fieldwork in the Balkans or something but at Harvard. He has a Bourne-like capacity for brutality and for weathering serious injuries, and the movie has a tendency to throw him into situations where he has to fight hand-to-hand, which admittedly end up looking better than the shootout sequences. But he has one of those, too: Sierra Six, which is a reference to the CIA program he’s recruited into at the start of the movie as well as a not-so-subtle nod to a certain globe-trotting spy. Adapted from the first of a series of books by Mark Greaney, it’s meant to launch a franchise, and it’s directed by Marvel veterans the Russo brothers.

The action-packed thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans is clever, stylish and fun to watch. But it's still missing something essential.

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You do not want to miss "The Gray Man," the Russo Brothers' latest action-packed movie featuring a star-studded cast led by Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans.

Donald is a former mentor of Six's and is a father-like figure in his life. Essentially, he is running the department for his own benefit, making deals with corrupt individuals and taking out any sort of threat. De Armas reunites with Gosling in The Gray Man. They stared together in Blade Runner 2049. The Gray Man is out in selected theatres now and is coming to Netflix on Friday, July 22. For his role as Lorne Malvo in Fargo, he earned a nomination for the Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie at the Emmy Awards and won Best Actor in a Miniseries or TV Film at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards. Thornton is well known for starring in the dramas Friday Night Lights and Fargo. Henwick is best known for her role as Numeria Sand in HBO's Game of Thrones and Jessika Pava in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Evans is best known for playing the role of Steve Rogers/Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films including Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), and Captain America: Civil War (2016), and the ensemble films The Avengers (2012), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019). He also starred in the critically acclaimed films The Big Short and La La Land, winning a Golden Globe for Best Actor and receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the latter. Gosling is best known for roles in the romantic films The Notebook and Crazy, Stupid, Love. Chris Evans portrays Lloyd Hansen, a complete sociopath who is close friends with Six's boss Denny. Lloyd is called in as a contract killer and torturer, determined to find Six and seize the secrets he holds. The Gray Man is available to watch in selected theaters from today and will land on Netflix worldwide on Friday, July 22.

It's not enough to see Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling do battle in just one Netflix movie, so here's all the info on The Gray Man 2 release date.

That’s all we know about The Gray Man 2 release date for now, but we’re sure more details will crawl out of the woodwork as the dust settles on this first chapter in Court Gentry’s journey. So, when can we expect The Gray Man 2 release date to be? What will be The Gray Man 2 release date?

Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas face off in an explosive and expensive thriller in theaters now and on Netflix soon.

In the wake of public shootings in the US, Denmark and Norway (and that's just this year) this callous ultraviolence hits different. The quippy banter and sharp action are heightened and stylized, and just a ton of fun. But then there's a huge showdown in the streets of a European city. Maybe I'm squinting too hard to suggest this is Netflix's smartest action film, but it's definitely one of the most fun. On paper, The Gray Man has all the elements of a formulaic spy genre (and I do mean all the elements -- there's about four movies' worth of stuff going on). Thumb drives. That's what sets The Gray Man apart from formulaic plods like Extraction or Amazon's turgid Without Remorse. From the opening scene, in which Gosling goes into battle in a crisp scarlet suit twirling a water pistol, to his silent silhouetted dispatching of a platoon of bodyguards with whatever cutlery comes to hand, the flick has swagger to burn. Rooftop helipads and secure lines and guys making the bullets fall out of a gun before the other guy can shoot him. At least de Armas' appearance in Bond film No Time to Die was essentially a cameo, but this is a waste of the white-hot star of the moment. Clearly directors Joe and Anthony Russo are very self-aware about the type of flick they're making. After 60 years of James Bond on screen, after six (and counting) Mission: Impossible movies, a spy movie hinges on a frickin' thumb drive! "We get it, you're glib," Thornton responds, but as Gosling contemplates a life of murder for the government his eyes soften mournfully. In some theaters now and then streaming on Netflix July 22, The Gray Man opens with Gosling in prison two decades ago, wisecracking at Billy Bob Thornton's unflappable CIA spook.

The Russo Brothers' latest attempt to build an action franchise is a flashy display that can't outrun it's lack of imagination.

The Gray Man is a competently crafted action film by professionals who may as well be operating on autopilot. The term "gray man" refers to one who can seamlessly blend into a crowd, undetectable to the uninformed observer. The Russo's aren't reinventing the wheel and most of the film's setpieces would feel right at home in The Winter Soldier, but it's well put together. Some are extremely effective, others look like cheap ways to hide occasionally dodgy CGI. This film cost $200 million to make, reportedly one of the highest budgets in Netflix's history, and the cash isn't always on-screen. Gosling isn't exactly being asked to portray the depths of human drama here, but he handles his glib quippy dialogue and mild inconvenience in the face of violence well. The Gray Man isn't an embarrassing disaster like Bright, it's a technically proficient waste of time, like Red Notice.

This week's new entertainment releases include Beyoncé's new album “Renaissance,” Stephen Curry hosting the ESPYS sports awards and the summer thrill ride ...

Among the highlights: “Island of Walking Sharks,” on Wednesday, with a scientist’s investigation of shark evolution. Made in connection with the 2019 ZZ Top Netflix documentary, “That Little Ol’ Band From Texas,” the 11-track album was produced by Gibbons, and is dedicated “in righteous memory of Dusty Hill.” Another song on the new set is titled “Queen of the Bees” and has the silly lyric “I want to hold you like a sloth hugs a tree.” He told EW: ”I was challenging myself to sort of see what I could get away with!” ”I knew the sounds I was hearing in my head were so unorthodox that I had to do most of it myself,” he says. — The summer thrill ride known as Shark Week is back on Discovery Channel for its 34th year, with stars including tiger sharks with a taste for pork and “monster” hammerheads. — Before Billy Porter was a Broadway star and red-carpet doyen, he was a kid in Pittsburgh. In “Anything's Possible, ” Porter returns to his hometown to make his directorial debut, a trans coming-of-age comedy.

Did you know that there's a $200 million movie from the second- and third-highest-grossing directors of all time starring the sixth-highest-grossing actor ...

Given that Netflix is losing subscribers and investor confidence, it’s not clear how the struggling streamer will be meaningfully helped by The Gray Man. Doesn’t matter that much; this is one of those movies where the real villain is the CIA, so the less thought given to the guys the CIA is in charge of neutralizing, the better. The Gray Man is fairly generic as far as generic thriller-action movies go.

Netflix's The Gray Man is stacked with talent. Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame's Anthony and Joe Russo directed the film, which stars Ryan ...

The appeal of a film like The Gray Man lies in how more than what, as the cast and crew work in concert to execute exciting action sequences. But they catapulted to their current success by depicting casual catastrophe, which is less charming without a familiar stable of superheroes to bolster their work with fan affection. They’re both action stars in their own right, and while de Armas gets a couple of good fights, Henwick’s character feels like an afterthought in a film that should have engaged with both of them more. And the stakes keep rising to the point where the characters become superhuman by default, as they survive exploding cargo planes and derailed high-speed trolleys with little more than a bandage and a quip to walk it off. Similarly underutilized are Jessica Henwick (the secret best part of Netflix and Marvel’s maligned Iron Fist series) and Knives Out’s Ana de Armas. The latter is an operative who worked alongside Six and decides to help figure out why the CIA wants him dead. Flash forward to the present, and Gentry faces a delicious question that drives the plot into motion: How does a man with his job retire?

Based on the 11-book series of the same name by Mark Greaney, it stars Ryan Gosling as former CIA agent-turned-mercenary Court Gentry. He's uncovered dark ...

But now the tables have turned and Six is the target, hunted across the globe by Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans), a former cohort at the CIA, who will stop at nothing to take him out. The "'Midnight Run' bickering" he's referring to here is something that the Russo brothers are very good at capturing, both in their comedic work and their more serious films. "THE GRAY MAN is CIA operative Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling), aka, Sierra Six. Plucked from a federal penitentiary and recruited by his handler, Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton), Gentry was once a highly-skilled, Agency-sanctioned merchant of death. It just depends on the narrative." Joe and Anthony Russo's " The Gray Man" hits select theaters today before its streaming debut on Netflix on July 22, 2022. The filmmakers were asked if they'd have any interest in returning to comedy, and Anthony Russo confirmed they would, while Joe Russo took it a step further.

Netflix's The Gray Man's ending closes out a few plot threads while leaving other hanging. We dive into the ending and potential sequel plans.

This is likely done on purpose in a bid to promote a sequel in the future, and there is plenty of source material to draw from considering there are several books in The Gray Man series. The Gray Man’s themes of trust reveal that corruption exists everywhere, and especially in espionage agencies where rules and protocols — no matter how they’re initially sold as a means to protect — can be sidestepped for any reason. With the drive destroyed, Sierra Six and Dani don’t have the evidence to incriminate Carmichael. Lloyd is dead and Suzanne Brewer is rising in power alongside Carmichael, both of whom are free to continue working together after being exonerated. Sierra Six was going to be stuck in prison for a long time, repeating the same daily activities like Sisyphus. What’s more, Sierra Six is clever and has managed to avoid being killed throughout the film despite so many assassins coming after him. It’s more likely the culprit is someone who is already working with the agency internally and is with the top brass. While Carmichael and Suzanne are presented as being senior officers in the CIA, there are a lot of references to someone helping them discreetly. Is Sierra Six destined to be on the run forever, stuck within the CIA or as the agency’s target? The Gray Man has a rather explosive ending and there are plenty of unresolved plot threads that seem to be setting up a sequel. The Russos certainly wanted the action thriller to be a franchise starter and there is a lot more that can be explored. Meanwhile, Sierra Six escapes from the hospital after being healed to go rescue Claire, who was being kept in a well-guarded facility as leverage. Jessica Henwick's character was overlooked a lot throughout the film, but she is now at the same level of power as Carmichael, having killed Lloyd and destroyed the flash drive with incriminating information. The Gray Man ending explained.

"The Gray Man's" biggest muscle flex doesn't come from Ryan Gosling or Chris Evans (not that they're slackers), but rather the overall casting, throwing in ...

Ultimately, "The Gray Man" is an unintentionally appropriate title to describe a movie that exists within such a narrow band of the cinematic spectrum. Gosling's Court Gentry gets plucked out of prison, naturally, to kill for the CIA, operating in a gray realm that, to quote the old song, gives him a number and takes away his name. school of loud if not-all-that-colorful Netflix action movies, where casting, social-media clout and superhero cred in the key cast makes the quality basically irrelevant.

Una lista curada por The Associated Press de lo que está por llegar a los servicios de streaming, las plataformas musicales, el cine y la televisión en ...

Realizado en relación con el documental de ZZ Top de Netflix “That Little Ol ’Band From Texas” de 2019, el álbum fue producido por Gibbons y está dedicado “en memoria de Dusty Hill”. Biólogos marinos e instituciones aportan información sobre el apareamiento y la migración de tiburones, y se prometen hallazgos sobre una especie nueva y no descrita. — Antes de que Billy Porter fuera una estrella de Broadway y las alfombras rojas, era un niño en Pittsburgh. En “Anything’s Possible”, Porter regresa a su ciudad natal para hacer su debut como director con una comedia trans sobre el paso a la mayoría de edad. Otra canción se titula “Queen of the Bees” y dice (en inglés): “Quiero abrazarte como un perezoso abraza un árbol”. White dijo a Entetainment Weekly: "¡Me desafié a mí mismo para ver con qué podía salirme con la mía!” — El emocionante viaje de verano conocido como “Shark Week” está de vuelta en Discovery Channel por 34º año, con estrellas que incluyen tiburones tigre con gusto por la carne de cerdo y tiburones martillo “monstruos”. Las Islas Exuma de las Bahamas y Papua Nueva Guinea se encuentran entre los nuevos lugares visitados durante el gran espectáculo de una semana que se transmitirá desde el domingo 24 de julio hasta el sábado 30 de julio, con Dwayne Johnson como su primer maestro de ceremonias. En junio, adelantó en sus redes sociales que “Renaissance” sería un “primer acto”, pero no está claro cuántos habrá o cuándo se estrenarán.

Deadline has an exclusive track from the score for Netflix's tentpole 'The Gray Man' composed by Henry Jackman.

Jackman likened the process of developing it to growing his own tree for ingredients to cook with: nourishing it and watering it, trimming and cultivating its branches, and really taking the time to create something amazing and organic. In the end, of course, the Russos loved it, and Jackman used the suite as the basis for the rest of the film’s score. He penned his suite for the film over the course of 11 months—a length of time in which he could have completed five films—growing obsessed with the piece at a point when he was only supposed to be banging out some ideas for the score.

Joe and Anthony Russo's 'The Gray Man' is the kind of lame bullshit one's come to expect from Netflix, but at least Ryan Gosling's fun.

De Armas is a blank slate, required to do no more than gaze in awe at Gosling (and to be fair, who wouldn’t, even if he wasn’t doing impossible feats) and occasionally kick ass, with a quarter of the satisfying panache that she did in No Time to Die – in fact, there’s so much here that feels like that film, yet inferior, that if it weren’t based on a popular novel, one might assume it was what Missing in Action was to Rambo: First Blood Part II. The rest of the cast behaves in a mechanical fashion, fulfilling their roles in the plot and disappearing from one’s memory or going out in a blaze of glory (which happens at least three times) so that our heroes can escape. However, we don’t live in the best of all possible worlds, so we have the Russos. Whatever they are – good television comedy directors, decent producers – they aren’t built for mega-scale blockbusters without the groundwork of Marvel’s pre-visualization teams or second-unit directors (and even then, they struggled with action). Each CGI-filled set-piece is worse than the last: the film begins with a somewhat promising action sequence set in Bangkok as New Years’ fireworks rain down over the celebrating city, as Six prepares to take down an agency turncoat alongside a fellow agent, played by Ana De Armas. His decisions at that moment – to flee with evidence of wrongdoing on the company’s part and try to escape his inevitable end – have consequences, and the agency puts out a hit on him, assigned to Evans’ freelancer after an attempt on his life goes haywire. That is the sole hopeful notion to offer as a takeaway from The Gray Man: No amount of horseshit can stand in the way of Gosling being Gosling, though I wouldn’t recommend trying to see it for yourself; you probably already spend way too much time on your phone. If there’s one thing that makes The Gray Man even vaguely compelling, it’s seeing what happens when you drop an authentic and weird performer like him into a wholly artificial – and by this, I mean “clockwork constructed as if it were rolled off of an assembly line” – film. For all the vitriol flung at Joe and Anthony Russo’s Cherry last year, one undeniable fact about it is that it was ambitious, and even if that ambition curdled into a disagreeable pretension, it showed that the Brothers behind Avengers: Endgame were, at the very least, trying their best to make meaningful art. It’s no secret that Netflix has wanted their own John Wick for a little while – Polar, Kate, and, of course, Extraction being a few examples – but all of them have lacked the intangible element that makes that film series so particularly fascinating and essential to the zeitgeist that it has spawned collections of academic writing on its color schemes and so on.