Just because I went into a mini-COVID bubble doesn’t mean I can’t see a new release. I mean, Netflix just dropped The Gray Man, the latest directorial effort by the Russo Brothers. Those guys did great with their various MCU movies, but their first effort outside the MCU was the generally bad Cherry. Were the Russos the kind of directors who only really do well when they have an established universe to play with? At the very least, there’s a top notch cast for The Gray Man, including their old MCU collaborator Chris Evans.
Then again, Cherry featured Tom Holland, another MCU actor they worked with quite a bit beforehand, so that was no guarantee.
CIA assassin codenamed Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling) is part of a program that took convicted killers out of prison and set them out to kill America’s enemies. However, he finds out something he shouldn’t have after a job turns out to be to take out another individual from the program: their superior, rising up-and-comer Denny Carmichael (Rege-Jean Page), is corrupt. Knowing this puts a target on Six’s back. Carmichael then hires Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans), a mercenary that used to work for the agency before leaving due to his more socipathic tendencies. To further that end, he kidnaps the young niece of Six’s old recruiter Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thorton) and forces Fitzroy’s help. When that doesn’t work, Hansen takes Fitzroy hostage as well. That may be a big mistake. Fitzroy was like a father to Six, and the niece and Six had a familial bond between themselves as well.
Six isn’t completely without allies as an agent he worked with on his final job (Ana de Armas) is willing to help, and Hansen’s methods tend to turn off a lot of people who end up working with him. What follows is a globetrotting adventure as Six travels the globe, escaping Hansen’s mercenary teams, and finding out what he can to rescue Fitzroy and his niece. Six is the best of his program. He knows how to kill. He’ll need to be in order to get out of this mess. There are a lot of people out to kill him.
So, good news: this was better than Cherry. There are some really good action sequences, particularly one where Six tries to escape a collection of gunmen while riding on the roof of a trolley going through Prague. But beyond that, this really is a fairly by-the-numbers sort of spy thriller. What makes the movie shine a bit is generally found in what individual actors can bring to the table. Thorton, for example, gives off that fatherly charm that makes it easy to see why Six loves the man the way he does.
But then there’s Chris Evans. Evans spent a number of years playing Captain America for the MCU, a character generally seen as a moral paragon. It would take a rare actor to find a way to give a character like that a means for an audience to connect with him, and Evans managed to pull it off. It is to the actor’s credit that he has since gone on to play characters about as far removed from Steve Rogers as he can both here and in Knives Out. He does a good job in the role as a man so loathsome, but overall, this is still a rather rote sort of movie for this genre.
Grade: C+
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