The Gray Man

Formulaic and preposterous, the Russos’ bloated action-thriller makes no sense but is sort-of engaging thanks to its sheer chutzpah and energy.

Express ride: Ryan Gosling

It’s been four years since we last saw Ryan Gosling. That was when he played Neil Armstrong, to glowing reviews, in Damien Chazelle's First Man. So maybe it was the reported $20m that Netflix paid him that lured Gosling back to the big screen. Or maybe it took him that much time to sculpt his body back to the condition that Emma Stone so winningly admired in Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011). Either way, The Gray Man seems an odd choice for the actor, whose turns in The Big Short, La La Land and Blade Runner 2049 were considerably more up-market. Here, he’s back to playing the taciturn, principled and indestructible superman he essayed in Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011). After Drive, Gosling returned to work with Refn in Only God Forgives (2013), a garish and unspeakably violent action-thriller set in Bangkok. After the prologue of The Gray Man, we find Gosling back in Bangkok, where he’s kitted out in a white shirt and embarrassingly red suit in the garish setting of a Thai nightclub. He has come full circle it would seem.

Here, he plays ‘Six,’ or ‘Sierra Six’ in full, a CIA operative assigned to silence the baddest guys on the planet. But, unlike Only God Forgives, The Gray Man comes with a $200m budget and everything is played for the biggest effect that money can buy. So, instead of discreetly making his mark disappear, Six is provided with something akin to a rocket launcher to fire up through two glass floors of the nightclub and to draw as much global publicity as possible. It’s a ‘huh?’ moment with which The Gray Man is peppered, directed with a manic ‘anything goes’ glee by the brothers Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame) whose remit would appear to be to go as big as the finances will allow. And so armies of rival hit squads appear out of nowhere to demolish as much of Europe as ballistically possible for a covert agency (the CIA) with apparently unlimited resources.  

It is all preposterous and nonsensical, but thanks to Gosling’s perverse sang froid and the scenery-chewing hysteria of his opposite, rogue independent contractor Lloyd Hansen, the film displays a deviant degree of allure. Chris Evans plays Hansen and would appear to be enjoying himself enormously, not least because of his $20m payday, an identical amount as Gosling but without the same hours. Hansen is one of those amoral villains whose record of unsanctioned torture and complete disregard for the lives of the public and European police force makes one question the sanity of America’s foreign policy. But then this is the sort of film in which agents jump through plate glass windows and small armies are sacrificed in order to save the life of an eleven-year-old girl with a poignant heart condition and a pacemaker. Of course, it helps that the latter, the niece of Billy Bob Thornton’s old CIA dog Donald Fitzroy, is played by the supremely talented Julia Butters, who previously ran circles around Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… Any battalion worth its salt in semi-automatics should lay down its life to save the girl, at least for another twenty-four hours.

Meanwhile, the largest platoon of drones in Hollywood history is dispatched across the globe – to Baku, Croatia, Hong Kong, London, Monaco, Prague, Turkey, Washington DC – to provide The Gray Man with international appeal. It’s absurd, illogical and sadistic, but lovers of such formulae will undoubtedly believe they’re getting their money’s worth.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick, Regé-Jean Page, Wagner Moura, Julia Butters, Dhanush, Alfre Woodard, Billy Bob Thornton, Callan Mulvey, Shea Whigham, Grace Russo, Lia Russo. 

Dir Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, Pro Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Joe Roth, Jeff Kirschenbaum, Mike Larocca, Chris Castaldi and Palak Patel, Screenplay Joe Russo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, from the novel by Mark Greaney, Ph Stephen F. Windon, Pro Des Dennis Gassner, Ed Jeff Groth and Pietro Scalia, Music Henry Jackman, Costumes Judianna Makovsky, Dialect coach Jessica Drake. 

AGBO/Roth/Kirschenbaum Films-Netflix.
128 mins. USA. 2022. UK and US Rel: 15 July 2022. Cert. 15.