The Gray Man review: Ryan Gosling’s Netflix film drowns in its excesses

Anthony and Joe Russo , whose last film ( Avengers: Endgame , 2019) concluded one of the most ambitious phases of a superhero universe in a manner that had entire auditoriums cheering, start small in their latest film. Two men are sitting across from each other inside a room and talking. Alternating between tight mid-close-ups and regular over-the-shoulder shots, the tropey scene plays out, whose many versions we’ve witnessed in films before. A mysterious man ( Billy Bob Thornton ) is telling an inmate ( Ryan Gosling ) that he can make his life sentence disappear. “Who are you, my fairy godmother? No offence, but I thought you’d look a little different!” says the inmate while laughing. Offering him a watermelon-flavoured gum, the mysterious man says, “I’m here to turn you into a value-add, instead of a value-lost.” The inmate’s name is Courtland Gentry, being recruited by CIA’s Donald Fitzroy as a part of a Sierra program, whose mission is “to kill bad guys”. So far, so Jason Bourne. And yet, it’s a deft scene that doesn’t overstay its welcome – introducing the two men, setting the stage, condensing the exposition, even hinting at the dynamic between the individuals – in under a crisp 138 seconds. Going from adapting one of the most dense comic book universes to turning a novel into the most bare-bones Hollywood blockbuster material, one can almost imagine the Russos winking at their audience. Adapted from a 2009 novel by Mark Greaney of the same name, the film was reportedly in development for almost five years, before which Netflix and the Russo brothers entered the picture. Made on a reported budget of $200 million and featuring a first-grade cast including Gosling, Chris Evans , Ana De Armas , Wagner Moura , Regé-Jean Page , Dhanush , Jessica Henwick and Thornton, ensured that this would be one of the high-profile projects of the year. And the film starts off like that too. From that scene inside the jail where Fitzroy recruits Gentry, now nicknamed Sierra Six or Six, we cut to a mission in Bangkok eighteen years later. Six is sporting a bright pink suit, something Ana De Armas’ Dani Miranda (a fellow CIA agent) mocks as ‘too subtle’ even for a new year’s party. “I wear what they tell me to,” says Six with a pleasant smile. The mission involves Six taking out a ‘bad dude’ code-named ‘Dining Car’ – who will sell information that might compromise national security. The tension is built up gradually, prompting the audience to feel for someone like Six. Even for being a hired gun, is it possible to have a ‘moral code’? After being told to go ahead with the mission, despite Six stating that he’s picking up “collateral”, what follows is a nice little segue at the end of the scene that results in Six locked in a hand-to-hand combat scene with ‘Dining Car’ – who claims to be Sierra Four himself. He gives Six a pendant with a microchip detailing the misdeeds of the new regime at the CIA (Regé-Jean Page’s Denis Carmichael) that replaced Fitzroy and Co. The film becomes the hot pursuit for Six from hereon. Given the immense potential of its B-movie outline, it’s not surprising that The Gray Man’s plot resembles many earlier films including Siddharth Anand’s 2019 film, War . Even in its Bollywood counterpart, Hrithik Roshan plays a well-established spy, who goes ‘rogue’ after learning about some information during a mission. Like War has Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff taking part in a dance-off, or even how Vaani Kapoor graces the screen for the duration of almost two songs only to be bumped off without a second thought, even The Gray Man has plenty of garnish. Gosling seems to be moving away from his Nicolas Winding-Refn and Denis Villeneuve school of characters, to have some loose fun. One of the finest deadpan faces in the business, Gosling’s Six is asked by Miranda “Are you okay?” after surviving a town-square bloodbath. To which Six responds with “my ego’s a little bruised” referring to how Miranda has saved him from certain death a second time in a row. While watching the film, I wondered why certain actors take up certain parts? I’m sure any actor might have dreamt of a role that riffs on the Jason Bourne, James Bond and Ethan Hunt films. Add to that a segment in the film that requires Six to play caretaker for Fitzroy’s niece, Claire ( Julia Butters ) – and it would also check the box for Denzel Washington’s Man on Fire. After all this, is it a no-brainer? Similarly, with Chris Evans, who spent a decade playing the beacon of American ideals (mostly with the Russos) as Captain America, he shares a nice little stare-off moment with Billy Bob Thornton. Evans plays Lloyd Hansen, a former CIA-personnel turned private contractor tasked by the CIA for the more ‘tricky’ assignments. Hansen was let-go for his psychopathic tendencies and unauthorised use of torture techniques during interrogations, so it only makes sense that when Six goes absconding with information that could potentially bring down the entire CIA, Hansen is tasked with chasing him down. And during this, Hansen has an extended torture scene staring Fitzroy in the eye. What’s interesting over here is how Fitzroy does not even blink, as Hansen picks his nails to get some information out of him. Thornton, like he has mentioned in a lot of his earlier works, is the original “crazy guy” of Hollywood. To see Evans dancing to the same tune Thornton has made a career out of, is a nice little moment. Ana de Armas, who had earlier made her presence felt even in the largely overstuffed Bond film from last year, is just a shadow here. The Russos even incorporate Dhanush as a ‘sexy Tamil’ assassin called Lone Wolf – which in a project like this means appeasement for geographical purposes. Given one decent action sequence inside a hospital in (presumably) Prague with Gosling, Dhanush’s character also has an abrupt change-of-heart towards the end of the film. What began as a potentially lean and probably a subversive blockbuster becomes more and more generic, as it goes on. The Russos used to embody Hollywood’s indie spirit, especially if one remembers their Community episodes from a decade ago. Which is why it’s strangely dissonant to see them be so wasteful in The Gray Man, relying on the big explosions and the increasingly clunky dialogue (without the slightest bit of self-awareness) to do the heavy lifting. It’s almost incomprehensible in the manner that the director-duo have bungled up a low-stakes universe like this, where the good remain good, bad remain bad, and the tactical remain tactical throughout the film’s runtime. While a ‘twist’ is never always the best answer, maybe within a B-movie setup like this, it would have helped to have anything surprise us. It remains one of the serious drawbacks of The Gray Man – is how little of it you don’t see coming from a mile away. Both Gosling and Evans feel game for a much bolder movie, however the Russos play it safe in a movie that mistakes loudness for scale. Unfortunately, with the Mission Impossible series or a franchise like John Wick that celebrates its own flimsiness, the stakes for the action blockbuster have been raised. The Gray Man exists somewhere strictly in the middle of all this. It’s the prime fault of a film that mistakes the “gray” for ambiguity, when it’s actually just plain dull. The Gray Man is streaming on Netflix

Tatsam Mukherjee has been working as a film journalist since 2016. He is based out of Delhi NCR. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .