Review by C.J. Bunce
It came out to little fanfare in 2022, before former movie audiences were getting back to the movie theater. But with Anthony and Joe Russo at the helm, it seemed instantly assured to have a sequel on the way. The Gray Man primarily is a mix of James Bond action with the plot of The Transporter, but its action is straight out of the Russo Brothers’ Extraction series. With a stack of the stars from Blade Runner 2049 and the Marvel movies, it really is worth your time. Ryan Gosling stars as Sierra Six, a CIA “gray ops” assassin whose usefulness to illegal government puppet masters has expired. The Gray Man is streaming now on Netflix.
What you may know about this movie is that Chris Evans is the villain–sporting a bad moustache and bad hair, full of endless monologues, his character, named Lloyd, is the kind of guy you’ll hope someone finishes off quickly. That doesn’t happen, which leaves time for lots of more interesting characters. Billy Bob Thornton plays Fitzroy, the cool customer who first recruits Six, and who later is extorted into helping uglier elements get to Six by using his niece as a bargaining chip. Gosling Blade Runner 2049 co-star and former Bond girl Ana de Armas plays Dani Miranda, another operative who gets caught between fighting factions within the CIA.
Regé-Jean Page plays Bad Guy #1, who directs Six to kill what seems to be another worthy target, only to be revealed to be another Sierra secret agent. When Six takes a locket with secret information off the agent after shooting him, Page’s bad guy sends the entire gray ops community after Six. Turns out the information will incriminate Page’s guy and others up the ranks.
Iron Fist’s Jessica Henwick is another CIA official caught in this scramble to clean up all the special ops activity gone wrong. Even better, another ex-Marvel actor, the great Alfre Woodard plays another operative. She definitely brings some added street cred to the film.
Based on a novel by Mark Greaney, the plot is incredibly thin, but Gosling sells the movie, along with action sequences that seemed to queue him up for his role in The Fall Guy (reviewed here at borg last week).
Ultimately the fun comes from the interaction between Gosling and the characters that support him, especially de Armas, Woodard, Thornton, and even young Julia Butters as Thornton’s niece. The more the show leans into the James Bond elements, the better the scene plays. The Russo Brothers take Gosling backward via flashbacks–something that is usually annoying, but works here, revealing why Sierra Six went to jail many years ago, and how he developed the circle he relies on later when it counts. In the end, it all wraps up in a satisfying way, even if it all runs a bit long.
If you like action, or any of the actors, and even if you don’t want to see Evans as a sleazy, annoying bad guy, you’ll want to double back and give this a try. The Gray Man is streaming now on Netflix.
