The Gray Man is not what you would expect. Here is how we can begin to understand it.
A brief prologue set in 2003 depicts Six’s recruitment from a jail cell by agency operative Donald “Fitz” Fitzroy (a de-aged Billy Bob Thornton), before the film skips forward 18 years, with Six caught in the middle of a Bangkok hit where things don’t feel quite right.
Assisted by field agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas, in a less layered version of her role in No Time To Die), and questionably ruthless instructions by ruthless his new boss, the young hot-shot Denny Carmichael (Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page), Six does things his own way and creates a ruckus at a flashy nightclub, leading to a barely comprehensible fist-fight with his target, which ends with him acquiring secret data that threatens the Agency’s operations.
What follows takes its cues from Skyfall, the Bourne Trilogy, a few Missions: Impossible, and even John Wick, but it never manages to create a character or action sequence as memorable as any of its inspirations. I raised my expectations because of the people involved in its creation, but being a Netflix exclusive I had quite a few reservations and my instinct did not deceive me.
Based on the novel series by Mark Greaney (a frequent collaborator of the late Tom Clancy), The Gray Man is Netflix’s latest shot at a first installment in a hopeful franchise (see also: The Old Guard). The streaming giant reportedly cut the Russos a mammoth check of $200 million, but this investment is rarely reflected by the film’s flimsy, textureless appearance that makes exotic locations feel cheap, and complicated fight scenes seem hastily strung together.
While it eventually becomes watchable, it spends most of its runtime being visually and emotionally indecipherable.
This is now the fourth action film that the Russo Brothers have directed, and unfortunately they don’t seem to be getting any better at it. Aside from two hand-to-hand combat scenes, the fights are a dimly-lit mess of quick cuts and bullets flying.
Perhaps this could have been an elevated version of the standard American action film in the hands of a director with a little more panache, but the Russo Brothers haven’t proven themselves as having any of sort of visual style or identity as artists. As such, even with two of America’s best present-day talents in the key roles, The Gray Man is doomed to the annals of history as an inexplicably expensive (it’s Netflix’s most costly film with a reported budget of $200 million) badly-written bore.
Each gun- or fist-fight features a few cool individual images, but these standalone elements never exceed the Russos’ blurry presentation. That’s especially deadly in an action movie that’s constantly trying to give viewers the impression of speed and scope, like when drone cameras transition between scenes by flitting around various cities’ identifying architectural features.
Well-known actors. A $200 million budget. Directed by the two men behind the biggest superhero movie in history, and yet The Gray Man is a lifeless experience without a shred of excitement, suspense, or tension.
Even the action is pretty simplistic. There's not a single great sequence in it. And with that budget, that's actually quite disappointing.
