The Gray Man, the new spy thriller on Netflix, suggests the streaming company does not think much of its audience. Sure, it is the most expensive film Netflix ever produced, with a whopping $200 million price tag, and the cast includes several beloved stars. But in terms of intrigue and suspense – the two most important elements to any spy thriller – the film maintains consistent mediocrity. Unlike James Bond or Mission: Impossible films, Netflix does not need spectacle or word of mouth for its success. It only needs to half-occupy the attention of its subscribers, and it does not care whether they watch on a home theater system, or on the toilet while they’re taking a shit. It goes through the motions of a spy thriller, rather than actually trying.
Directors Anthony and Joe Russo, who are responsible for several popular MCU films, once again prove they do not have any knack for action. When their characters punch, kick and shoot their way through a conflict, it is borderline impossible to discern how they move. Explosions are frequent, and often random. Quippy dialogue could elevate their convoluted premise, except the screenplay by Joe Russo – along with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely – is full of wordplay without any wit. It is a depressingly familiar feeling: one can register that what you’re hearing is meant as a joke, but there is nothing inventive or surprising about the dialogue. At one point, the villain says, “If you want to make an omelet, you got to kill some people.” It is enough to make hacky Bond villains cringe with embarrassment.
What makes The Gray Man so depressing is that the lead actors are nearly charismatic enough to save Netflix and The Russos from their tiresome impulses. Ryan Gosling, who took a break from movie acting after First Man, stars as Six (not to be confused with 007), an off-the-books assassin for the CIA. After an assignment in Bangkok goes awry, Six gets ahold of a gold medallion that contains a USB drive with compromising intel. A corrupt CIA desk jockey named Denny (Regé-Jean Page) will stop at nothing to get the drive, so he recruits Lloyd (Chris Evans), a sociopathic spy-for-hire with bad fashion sense and an endless supply of mercenaries. Six’s only option is to figure out who betrayed him, leading him to Europe, and to stop Lloyd before he destroys all the continent in his wake.
As an action star, Gosling has a quality that few of his contemporaries possess. He is able to add credibility through body language that suggests he is in on the joke, and yet there are moments where Six must possess a conscience. Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson had this quality at the peak of their popularity, and Gosling deploys it so that – at the very least – Six is a likable protagonist. He is funny without trying too hard, and uses understatement to heighten our awareness of his danger. Evans goes in a different direction, opting for a scenery-chewing villain who practically twirls his Eurotrash mustache. There is something to Evans abandoning good taste, particularly when he leans into Lloyd’s sadism, and yet he and Gosling never quite coalesce into complementary performances.
In stark contrast, Ana de Armas is wildly wasted as Dani, a good spy who wants to help Six. She was similarly underused in No Time to Die, but at least that film knew she is singularly charismatic and sexy. Here she is more like a plucky plot device, the kind of thankless character who serves as a vehicle for expository dialogue and lacks any personality. During the climax at a Croatian castle, she literally stands on the sidelines and picks off anonymous baddies with a bazooka, a weird decision that suggests the Russos have no clue how to leverage certain kinds of star quality. Then again, that should be little surprise because the MCU is practically on autopilot, based primarily on fan service and the same in-house effects unit who make each film look terrible in the same exact way.
Many action sequences start with promise. At one point, Gosling has to fight off some assassins in a cargo plane, and the sequence devolves into CGI muck. The major set-piece is a sustained chase through Prague, one where danger seemingly comes from every angle, which is another way of saying that chaos flattens our ability to understand why the characters do what they do. Early in the film, Six fights another assassin on New Year’s Eve, undergoing hand-to-hand combat as fireworks erupt around them. This is admittedly colorful, although the fireworks are a sleight of hand: the Russos are implicitly admitting they lack the chops to make a fight scene exciting without any bells and whistles.
Like many original Netflix films, The Gray Man will enter and leave the pop cinema landscape without much fanfare. If something from it does linger in the audience’s mind, it will be the kind of glaring plot holes that nearly suspend our collective disbelief. Midway through the film, Dani shoots Six and Lloyd with a tranquilizer dart. Her goal? She wants answers, dammit, and needs Six alive to ask them. But she leaves Lloyd – a major threat – alone on the street, despite knowing what a danger he presents. When we see him again, he’s already back at bad guy HQ, hatching another scheme to get the medallion. Why would Dani leave him like that? How could she be so incompetent? The Russos do not have an answer, and are counting on us not to care. A better film would make these questions ancillary, yet The Gray Man never gets close.
Photo courtesy of Netflix
The post The Gray Man appeared first on Spectrum Culture.