The Gray Man is insanely entertaining

First things first. How much of our Dhanush do we get to see in the Russo Brothers ’ eagerly awaited The Gray Man , Netflix’s spellbinding stormtrooper? The answer to that is, almost as much as we got to see of Amitabh Bachchan in Baz Luhrmann ’s The Great Gatsby . Which is not a good thing at all.

Dhanush makes his appearance precisely after one hour eighteen minutes of frenetic action that takes us across the most exotic spots in the world, so if you are prone to jetlags, The Gray Man is likely to leave you with a heavy head. But if you travel light, the way the screenplay for this film does, then you are guaranteed to have the kind of fun that would make you crave for the big screen.

Coming back to Dhanush—which is more than what the screenplay does—his arrival on screen is greeted by the stunningly suave archvillain Chris Evans , exclaiming “Hello, my sexy Tamil friend.” We will ignore the sexy. This means Dhanush plays a culture-specific Tamilian, and that’s a middle finger to the colour blindness that has set into world cinema. Imagine if Dhanush was playing Chris Evans’ long-lost stepbrother!

Dhanush has one major action sequence with the poker-faced Ryan Gosling and the lovely Ana de Armas , a very impressively staged action piece, after which Dhanush has a change of heart. He reforms tell Ana de Armas. ‘These are not good people’ about the organization that has hired him to kill her and Gosling, and then Dhanush makes a graceful exit.

This is a role that would be considered the eleventh lead in a Dhanush starrer. But who are we to question his choices?

There is so much in The Gray Man that kept me watching on the edge of my seat(popcorn forgotten). I missed the big screen. This is the world of Rohit Shetty on speed. (Sorry, didn’t mean to insult the Russos). The action is relentless and yet no one gets exhausted, least of all the co-directors who thrive on big epic shootouts and monumental explosions that take place when you least expect them; or maybe at just the moment when you expect them the most. For, the unexpected is the expected in a film by the Russo Brothers.

I don’t know how much of the plot I should give away. The Gray Man is the kind of dialed-up film where you either give away everything or nothing at all. Either way the expeditious excursion into nervy –land is crammed with breathless action: the one in Prague gets my Pan-Prague Action Of The Year award.

Happily, the leading lady participates in a lot of the action, and she more than compensates for her co-star’s lackluster presence. I have always seen Ryan Gosling to be Emraan Hashmi on a good-hair day. The two do bear more than a passing resemblance to one another.And their acting skills begin at A and proceed lazily close to B. That’s it! Gosling’s weaknesses are amplified when his co-stars are super-charismatic screen-stealers, not only Chris Evans (who is a crackerjack as the rogue CIA villain) and De Armas,but also veteran Billy Bob Thornton who plays the guy who trains Gosling(so we know whom to blame). There is a heartbreakingly pretty vulnerable teenaged girl Claire (played by Julia Butters , last seen in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In America) whom Gosling must protect from Evans.

There is an absolutely enchanting action sequence involving Claire filmed to the sound of the song ‘Silver Bird’ by Mark Lindsay. Some would say the Russo Brothers are fetishizing violence by making it look so pretty. But that’s only nitpicking.No one is getting sexually violated here. It’s all done in the spirit of a traditional Good Versus Evil combat.

Incidentally, there is no sex in The Gray Man, not even a fleeting kiss. Everyone is too busy fighting to pause for any other kind of activity.

By the way, Gosling plays 6. Yes, that’s his name in the CIA roster. When someone asks why he is called 6, Gosling deadpans, “Because 007 was taken.”

OK then.

The Gray Man is the kind of unassuming action film where the dialogues sound like smart responses to google queries. It also takes itself too seriously at times. There is a jokey question about chewing gum between ‘6’ and Claire, signifying the parameters of freedom of action, which recurs at the end when Ryan Gosling is actually shown chewing gum.

Metaphors are alien to this universe where action always speaks louder than words.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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