Anytime I watch an action film, I find myself looking for where the real world end and the special effects begin. In a good one, you can't tell; in a great one, you don't care. Netflix's "The Grey Man," is not a great movie, but it is a good one, and that's probably all the streaming service was trying for.
Ryan Gosling stars as the so-called grey man, though more frequently called "Sierra Six," for no other reason other than subscribe to the book of ye olde spy-movie cliché and give the script its obligatory, and admittingly throwaway, line about a certain other spy. To describe the plot of something like this is a disservice to the experience of it all- the narrative exists to give you a reason to A) like the protagonist, B) hate the antagonist, and C) give plenty and I mean plenty of excuses for explosions, shootouts, fistfights, chases, and the likes.
A lot has been said about the budget, which the internet tells me is something like 200 million, and it shows; combatting the aforementioned hero we get another expensive actor acting as the villain, Chris Evans as Lloyd Hansen, with a supporting cast featuring Ana de Armas and Billy Bob Thornton who are probably pricey in their own right. So the rest of the money clearly went to the special effects, which are thrilling, exciting, and every other adjective your thesaurus can muster. Yet the problem is the roteness of it all, how much of what ties the elaborate set pieces together is boilerplate, and by that I mean the script.
How are we back on the writing if I just said it doesn't matter? Because of the lofty production fee this film infamously carries, "The Grey Man" isn't content with settling for a lazy afternoon on the couch; this is a blockbuster with franchise implications you just so happen to be able to watch from your couch, and by setting its sights higher than what it ultimately is becomes its downfall.
Compare it to Netflix's own "Extraction" from two years back- aside from also staring a Marvel hero (in that case, Thor himself) and being a member to the same loose genre, there was an unpretentious nature to "Extraction," a film content with explosions and finding creative ways to showcase them. But "The Grey Man?" It felt that we wanted government intrigue filled with corrupt officials, where the only answer is more violence. More "bang bang." In 2022, I'm not sure anyone wants to be reminded in escapism that yes, the world kinda sucks right now.
Not that I have any issue with satire, oh no, but aside from a few obvious quips here and there, this is about as bone-dry an action film can be. Though after Netflix's last big spectacle, the unorganized CGI mess that was "Red Notice," I'm pretty OK with dry.
OK fine, I'll discuss the plot: Sierra Six acquires a flash drive with "secrets of national security," so the CIA hires Lloyd to kill him and to kill him and get the information back. In the process, he kidnaps Clair (Julia Butters), niece of Thornton's Fitzroy character, as collateral. It's a perfectly serviceable story for a dumb movie, but "The Grey Man" isn't smart enough to realize it's really dumb.
