[Review] The Gray Man (5.5/10)

 

Title - The Gray Man
Production - AGBO, Netflix, Roth Films
Starring - Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Billy Bob Thornton, Rege-Jean Page, Alfre Woodard, Jessica Henwick, Dhanush, Shea Wingham
Writer - Joe Russo, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Director - Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Release - 22 July 2022

This was quite the disappointment, especially when it's such a high-octane action-packed flick which the Russos have done quite a few now.

The action set pieces definitely looked great, and every sequence looked very expertly and expensively choreographed. 

But the make-or-break element for this type of movie is in the writing and that's where the film broke down. The drama was never setup properly, or never given enough opportunity to breathe. And when that failed, the audience were not able to care for its characters enough to care about the action. No urgency was built up so, even with great set pieces, they ended up being very hollow.

Also, and this was again very surprising to me, with how well Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote for the Avengers movies especially when there were so many characters involved; every character here talked with the same beat (except for the great Alfre Woodard). So, much like my main criticism for TV's "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel", there were no proper personality distinction between most of the main characters. 

However, I was surprised at how impressed I was while watching Rege-Jean Page's performance. So not only is he a pretty-boy from the annoying teenage-drama series "Bridgerton", he can also act.

This movie was also very long. The Russo brothers really dragged it on for as long as they could to make it feel as epic as they can. And I'm not surprised that Netflix is going to make a sequel and a spin-off of this world. But I would like to see someone else direct them because the potential is definitely there.