Review: The Gray Man left my face red

Mission briefing. The Gray Man is the latest action/thriller Netflix original, starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, the men behind Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. It released on the streaming platform this Friday, July 22. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to watch it. So should you? Let’s get into it.

First, a quick summary. A CIA agent going by the code name Six (Ryan Gosling) is having a grand old time killing bad guys and being a secret agent man. However, things change when one of his targets reveals that his employers may not be all they say they are. Soon, we’re on a fast-paced race for the truth. Caught in the crossfire is Six’s original recruiter Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton). Meanwhile, rival agent Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) is determined to stop Six.

And that’s about as coherent as the story ever gets. For though there are plenty of twist and turns, I’ll be damned if I could make heads or tails of any of it.

The primary issue with The Gray Man, I think, is that it has absolutely zero patience with itself, its story, or the audience. The first scene in this movie features Six, imprisoned for murder, talking with Thornton’s character, who offers him a way out by working for the CIA. We obviously don’t know who either of the characters are at this point and the scene doesn’t do much to fill us in, or at least, not in any interesting way. Thornton gives an exposition dump so we understand the necessary details of Gosling’s situation, but as far as what makes the character interesting or relatable: squat.

We then go to Bangkok for Gosling’s latest mission. As I mentioned in the summary, Six finds out from his target that his employers can’t be trusted, which sets him on a path of discovery. However, the plot progression is too fast for that revelation to have any meaning. In the scene just before, we learn that Six will have to start working for this org, right? And then in this next sequence, we find out that he can’t trust them and is now working against them. Okay, so for the character this may be an interesting betrayal, but to an audience just getting introduced to these players, it’s an info dump. There’s no intrigue here because the film is not taking its time. The audience should see Six and his employers on friendly terms before turning the relationship on its head; otherwise it doesn’t feel like it matters.

It doesn’t help that the movie makes some very unoriginal choices with its plot. Of course this bad guy has a villain scar on his face. Of course Six refuses to kill him at first because a kid gets in the way. I can practically see the writers ticking boxes.

A pace that makes waste

So the pacing of the story is too quick. Unfortunately, the editing decided to be even faster, because the amount of cuts is dizzying. The action scenes in The Gray Man are horribly disorienting, which means they’re not fun but rather obnoxious and even abrasive. Say what you will of the Uncharted movie, at least I could make sense of its airplane action scene. In a similar scene in The Gray Man, I strained to maintain focus. It is so quick, so cut up, so computerized, so frantically dull.

The editing also hurts the dialogue. For instance, there’s one scene where Six’s boss talks with his assistant in a bathroom. Not only is the dialogue delivered in this very plain shot-reverse shot editing, but it happens so fast, with every shot following the rhythm of each new line and cutting back and forth so quickly that it might give you whiplash. Would it kill the camera to hold on a wide shot for a second? Shoot the environments in an interesting, provocative way where all characters are in frame?

Not only is the rhythm of the editing too fast within the scenes themselves, but the way each of them are connected to the other lacks cohesion. An example: we’re with Ryan Gosling in Bangkok and he makes a call as he’s walking on the street. Then we transition to Baku, where Thornton answers. The film has a weird habit of filling the entire screen with the name of wherever it decides to warp you next, which is what happens here. But after Thornton picks up the phone, we cut back in Bangkok and following Six as they talk. Why does it matter to us that Bob Throton is in Baku for this one scene if it’s just a phone call? He isn’t even outside.

The movie really did a marvelous job of making the setting an absolute moot point. You watch The Gray Man for 20 minutes and you quickly clue in to the fact that wherever you are does not matter, because in the very next scene, the film will decide to take you to Singapore or Chiang Mai or Germany. And since the scenes themselves usually last all of two minutes, you start to wonder why the movie bothers to inform you of where you are to begin with.

Final Thoughts on The Gray Man

Beyond these glaring issues with the story and editing, a lot of the film I found to be either unremarkable or lame. Acting wise, Ryan Gosling does a serviceable job playing a typical action hero, but the performance doesn’t survive the aforementioned issues. Thornton comes across like he’s paying off an expensive parking ticket, and Chris Evans plays a very boring and standard rival threat. The music is overbearing, most likely to compensate for the lack of depth and drama the plot is providing. The sound mixing is noticeably weird as well. I can’t remember if they explained this through some story element, but why can Six hear that person he talks to in the start of the first action scene perfectly, while the party and fireworks make things inaudible and muffled? Just for convenience’s sake? Okay then.

I thought The Gray Man was terrible. Not only terrible in itself, but terrible in that it implies this is what Netflix want to give mainstream audiences. It’b one thing if the story was just bad, but to treat the viewer like they have the attention span of a goldfish is rather insulting, and I can’t imagine someone watching this without getting pissed off. Perhaps they think the editing has to be this quick and the spectacle this overblown to compete in the new world order of Marvel and Tiktok, but for me it was nauseating.

Sorry Ryan, but gray does not look good on you. Looking much more forward to seeing you in pink for the Barbie movie.

Grade: D

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