The Gray Man Review: The Russo Brothers’ Flat Cocktail of Ultraviolence and Snark

The Gray Man is a noisy, flashy spectacle that piles clichés atop ludicrous plotting and sprinkles it all with half-funny quips.

The Gray man
Photo: Netflix

If all you knew about the C.I.A. was what you saw in Anthony and Joe Russo’s The Gray Man, you would think it was solely devoted to assassination. The entire plot of the film revolves around the psychopathic Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) trying to take out his former colleague, Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling), a.k.a Sierra Six, after the latter uncovers unsavory secrets about the agency, which wants to eliminate every trace of Sierra, a poorly considered program that turns convicted murderers into government-sanctioned killers. If this sounds like the plot of every Jason Bourne film, that’s because it basically is.

Like the Bourne films, The Gray Man jumps from one city to another, stages elaborate fight scenes in tight quarters (a transport plane in mid-air, a Vienna street tram), and saddles its hero with a traumatic backstory to justify his sullen personality. Unlike that series, though, the film gives the hero a redemptive arc in which he needs to rescue a young girl, Claire (Julia Butters)—the niece of Court’s mentor-cum-father figure, Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton)—who Lloyd kidnapped for leverage. Also unlike just about any other film about an agent on the run, The Gray Man doesn’t bother having Court get to the bottom of anything. That would waste time better spent on the next very expensive set piece in which Court kills many people.

The first of those set pieces is an impressively ludicrous bit of business in which Court is ordered to take out a man in a Bangkok nightclub by using a sniper rifle to shoot through not one but two glass floors. But he balks after spotting a child in the way, thus establishing Court as that most beloved of modern cinematic archetypes: the killer with a heart of gold. Instead, he tries a different angle, silently taking out the target’s entourage one at a time with knives filched from plates along the way. Though the choreography is sloppily staged—a recurring problem throughout—the final fight between Court and his target is neatly framed by a seemingly endless fireworks display that establishes the film’s penchant for excess.

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That fight gives Court his McGuffin: a data drive suggesting corrupt skullduggery by C.I.A. honcho Dennis (Regé-Jean Page), whose badness is indicated by his sneering impatience and frequent mentions of having attended Harvard. After that, the chase is on to the next set piece, with Lloyd and a motley crew of international assassins in pursuit of Court and his unlikely C.I.A. ally, Dani (Ana de Armas). All the while, Russos have a difficult time deciding what to focus on more: the shootouts pitched at such a high level that they resemble battle scenes, or the sarcastic sniping between Court and Lloyd. Not surprisingly, the former get more screen time—especially a shootout between police and Lloyd’s kill squads in Vienna where the excess would have been better played as comedy—but the latter is more entertaining.

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Having played the straight man for the Russos in their Captain America and Avengers films, Evans seems unleashed here. Playing a vain and impatient but chipper sadist with a quick wit, the actor tears into the role with the relish of John Travolta in Face/Off. Meanwhile, the ever-laconic Gosling deftly plays the straight man, pricking the bubble of Lloyd’s pride as he evades one trap after another while mocking his pursuer (asked how he spotted Lloyd after only talking to him on the phone, Court replies, “The white pants and the trash ‘stache just says ‘Lloyd’”). While their characters are stock—switching them around and giving the hero all the good lines might have been nice for once—Evans and Gosling clearly enjoy their material, and that sense of play comprises most of what’s fun about The Gray Man.

Those glimmers of wit and chemistry are mostly nonexistent with the rest of the cast. Alfre Woodard brings cynical bite to her brief role as a retired spymaster, while Tamil star Dhanush appears in a cameo that seems to be setting his character up for a possible sequel or offshoot, but they’re the exceptions. Adapted by Joe Russo, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely from a multi-novel series by Mark Greaney, The Gray Man is a noisy, flashy spectacle that piles clichés atop ludicrous plotting and sprinkles it all with half-funny quips, all in the hope of bulldozing the audience into submission. Yes, it’s cool when Dani takes out an entire Croatian castle’s worth of baddies with a well-deployed grenade launcher. But at some point, the Russos will hopefully remember that firepower is not a substitute for story.

Score: 
 Cast: Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Regé-Jean Page, Billy Bob Thornton, Jessica Henwick, Dhanush, Wagner Moura, Alfre Woodard  Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo  Screenwriter: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo  Distributor: Netflix  Running Time: 122 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2022

Chris Barsanti

Chris Barsanti has written for the Chicago Tribune, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Publishers Weekly, and other publications. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and Online Film Critics Society.

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