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"The Grey" is an unrelenting demonstration that wolves have no opinion. When they attack, it's not personal. They've spent untold millennia learning how to survive, naked and without weapons, in fearsome places like the Arctic Circle in the dead of winter. They aren't precisely unarmed; they have their teeth and claws, but how far would that get us, even if we had rifles?

In the movie, a group of oil company workers get the opportunity to answer that question. They're workers at a pumping station in the far north, described in the opening narration by Ottway ( Liam Neeson ) as a sort of prototype for hell, occupied by "men unfit for mankind." They have the kinds of jobs you might take if you were desperate for the good pay, or perhaps driven to seek a place far from society where it is assumed that when you are not working, you are sleeping or drinking. The bar no doubt has cheap prices, and is crowded during an early scene that establishes Ottway and some other characters.

He is a marksman for the oil company. His job is to shoot wolves. When I learned of Sarah Palin hunting wolves from a helicopter, my sensibilities were tested, but after this film, I was prepared to call in more helicopters. I was also stunned with despair. It so happened that there were two movies scheduled that day in the Lake Street Screening Room (where we local critics see many new releases). After "The Grey" was over, I watched the second film for 30 minutes and then got up and walked out of the theater. It was the first time I've ever walked out of a film because of the previous film. The way I was feeling in my gut, it just wouldn't have been fair to the next film.

Ottway and a small planeload of other workers fly out on leave, on board a small airplane that crashes and strands them they know not where. Most are killed or die quickly. Seven are left alive. They hope they'll be found by rescuers, but Alaska is a big place, and their plane is small and rapidly being covered with snow. And then one of them walks a few steps away to take a leak and is struck by ravenous wolves.

Ottway is more experienced than the others and takes charge. He says their only chance is to walk below the tree line. It seems to me that wolves would be perfectly happy to hunt you among the trees, but I still think I'd listen to Ottway. 

They set off in bitter cold, slogging through snow, eating a little food from the plane, starting fires at night, intensely aware that they have attracted a large following of wolves. They use torches and a ring of smaller outlying fires to keep the animals at bay. In the darkness, the wolves' eyes reflect the firelight in unblinking, hungry stares.

There's time for some conversation among the men, and this film, directed by Joe Carnahan and written by him and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers , treats them as individuals. They're not simply a group of victims. We learn the most about Ottway, who was on the brink of suicide on the day before the flight. Now that his life has become precarious, he fiercely clings to it.

"The Grey" advances with pitiless logic. There are more wolves than men. The men have weapons, the wolves have patience, the weather is punishing. I sat regarding the screen with mounting dread. The movie had to have a happy ending, didn't it? If not "happy," then at least a relief in some sense? Sit through the entire credits. There's one more shot still to come. Not that you wouldn't be content without it.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Grey (2012)

Rated R for violence/disturbing content, including bloody images, and pervasive language

117 minutes

Liam Neeson as John Ottway

Frank Grillo as Diaz

Joe Anderson as Flannery

Dermot Mulroney as Talget

Dallas Roberts as Henrick

• Ian Mackenzie Jeffers

Directed by

• Joe Carnahan

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'The Gray Man' Review: Gosling and Evans Face Off in Best Netflix Action Movie Yet

Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas go head to head in an explosive thriller from the Russo brothers that's already confirmed a sequel and spinoff.

Ryan Gosling switches to action mode in Netflix shoot-'em-up The Gray Man.

That's more like it. Following a string of wildly popular but not very good action movies (Red Notice, Extraction), Netflix delivers with The Gray Man, streaming now. This rip-roaring and star-powered spy romp from the Russo brothers throws all the money at the screen as Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans go head to head.

Having played in some theaters and streaming on Netflix since Friday, July 22, The Gray Man has already been successful enough for Netflix to confirm a sequel (with Gosling returning) and spinoff (from the writers of Deadpool).

The Gray Man opens with Gosling in prison two decades ago, wisecracking at Billy Bob Thornton's unflappable CIA spook. "We get it, you're glib," Thornton responds, but as Gosling contemplates a life of murder for the government, his eyes soften mournfully. And when we catch up to Gosling in the modern day, now a slick killing machine known only as Sierra 6, he's a jaded shell only good for dispatching nameless bad actors who got on the wrong side of Uncle Sam. Except he finds himself at odds with his calculating boss after he refuses to endanger a child.  

Woah woah woah. Seriously? In this, the year 2022, we're still making movies about assassins who go rogue because they won't kill a kid?

OK, fine. So anyway, Gosling comes into conflict with Chris Evans' unhinged mercenary as they're both sent to retrieve a vital USB drive, and --

Hang on, hang on. No. I'm not having it. A USB drive? After 60 years of James Bond on screen , after six (and counting) Mission: Impossible movies, a spy movie hinges on a frickin' thumb drive!

So yeah. On paper, The Gray Man has all the elements of a formulaic spy genre (and I do mean all the elements -- there's about four movies' worth of stuff going on). Thumb drives. A kidnapped niece. Bureaucrats who are the real villains. Wet teams striding across airfields in body armor. Action scenes cutting to analysts panicking in front of walls of monitors. Tense phone calls in skyscrapers. Rooftop helipads and secure lines and guys making the bullets fall out of a gun before the other guy can shoot him. 

But as yet another city name blares across the screen in massive letters, you start to wonder if the filmmakers are mocking the conventions of the spy genre. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo, the men behind several of Marvel's Captain America and Avengers movies, are very self-aware about the type of flick they're making. The quippy banter and sharp action are heightened and stylized, and just a ton of fun. We get it, they're glib. 

That's what sets The Gray Man apart from formulaic plods like Extraction or Amazon's turgid Without Remorse . From the opening scene, in which Gosling goes into battle in a crisp scarlet suit twirling a water pistol, to his silent silhouetted dispatching of a platoon of bodyguards with whatever cutlery comes to hand, the flick has swagger to burn. Don't be fooled by the title: There's nothing gray about the lush cinematography, kinetic camerawork and playful music. The Gray Man is up there with the stylized likes of Atomic Blonde, and might give John Wick a run for his money.

A big part of the film's success is the star wattage on display, Gosling and Evans (and super-charismatic guest star Dhanush) handling the action heroics and quippy banter with equal assuredness. Gosling plays it relatively straight, although Sierra 6's real name is Courtland Gentry, which means he has not one but two improbably cool action hero names. Evans hams it up for the both of them as a suavely unhinged torturer with a wardrobe of natty knitted polo shirts, like James Bond 's maladjusted little brother. His character, by the way, is called Lloyd Hanson, which is less cool than Sierra 6 but sticks in your mind because someone says it literally every 20 seconds.

I mention the names because Ana de Armas is also in this film, but I'm darned if I could tell you what her character's called. While the main guys have backstory (even if Evans' is just "went to Harvard"), her character doesn't have any motivating story that I can recall. The script doesn't even give her much of a personality apart from obligatory super-badassness, and being grumpy when guys yell at her. At least de Armas' appearance in Bond film No Time to Die was essentially a cameo, but this is a waste of the white-hot star of the moment.

The highlight of Ana de Armas' role is probably this suit.

This being an action flick, the many international stopovers lead to violence. It's all fun and games, obviously, all stylishly shot shootouts and rollicking punch-ups. But then there's a huge showdown in the streets of a European city. High-velocity rounds destroy homes. High-caliber death machines sweep crowded public squares. You might not see it, but regular normal people going about their everyday lives clearly get killed in horrible ways. In the wake of public shootings in the US, Denmark and Norway (and that's just this year) this callous ultraviolence hits different.

Maybe, just maybe, that's the point. After this apocalyptic battle, the film doesn't merrily exfil to the next exotic location. Instead, it lingers in a hospital, surrounded by the wounded and dying. Admittedly, this is partly a setup for the next fight. But The Gray Man at least shows a glimmer of thought about the savagery unfolding on screen, about the silver-screen depiction of violence as redemptive and protective, about the pointlessness of it all. It isn't exactly Drive or Only God Forgives, Gosling's 2011 and 2013 arthouse subversions (with director Nicolas Winding Refn) of the car chase and crime genres. But there's definitely a layer of subversive nuance going on here. It's telling that in this film's world of espionage, we never see any terrorists or doomsday weapons. The only threat to ordinary folk like you and me is the internal squabbling of various grubby sociopaths jockeying for power no matter who gets caught in the crossfire.

Ultimately, The Gray Man encourages us to enjoy the hell out of a stylish shoot-'em-up where good-looking people go bang-bang, while still nudging us to remember it's a fantasy. Maybe I'm squinting too hard to suggest this is Netflix's smartest action film, but it's definitely one of the most fun.

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‘The Gray Man’ Review: Guy vs. Guy

Ryan Gosling plays a blasé government operative opposite Chris Evans’s showy psychopath in this globe-trotting spy action movie.

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By Amy Nicholson

The frenetic caper “The Gray Man,” from the directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, boasts more vibrant color than the typical globe-trotting shoot-em-up about the C.I.A., a distinctly drab organization. The Russos’ lead, an agent known as Six (Ryan Gosling), wears a snazzy red suit with matching fingernail polish to his first onscreen assassination. Six works for his freedom, not his 401(k): He is a convicted murderer who was plucked from prison by a government suit (played by Billy Bob Thornton) and placed in a secret kill squadron. He seems to be OK with the deal, despite showing a light layer of fatigue that Gosling wears like a rain poncho.

The Russos’ more-is-more filmmaking ethos leaves little room for Gosling to explore Six’s complexities. Six’s opening hit goes askew, shattering his job security. And as this extravagant adventure sprints across 10 countries, including Thailand and Azerbaijan, Six remains unflappably blasé. “I get it, you’re glib,” Thornton’s character says to him. So is every other person in the movie, a funny, if indistinguishable, blitz of quipping colleagues, snarky villains (including the main bad guy, a heavy played by Chris Evans) and a hardened cancer patient (Alfre Woodard) who glowers, “If you say anything even remotely sympathetic, I will shoot you.”

The film’s writers — Joe Russo along with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, frequent collaborators on the brothers’ films — have created a screenplay that is an assault of amusement; a barrage of bullets and one-liners. The razzle-dazzle does quite a bit to invigorate what is at its core a routine tale. (It comes as no shock that the real enemy is, as ever, the C.I.A. itself, in a story that contains no fewer than three all-too-convenient explosions.) Yet the frenzy is also distracting to the brink of self-sabotage. An early fight scene is jazzed with so many spliced-in shots of smoke and fireworks that one worries the Russos are insecure about Gosling’s ability to execute his stunts. Thankfully, the film grows in confidence and inventiveness. In later sequences, Six doggedly rescues himself from a tumbling plane, a trap door and a set of handcuffs.

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The gray man, common sense media reviewers.

Spy flick has violent action, standard storyline.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Very violent, but courage and perseverance are sho

Six is a killer, but he has an empathetic backgrou

Characters of color (played by Alfre Woodard, Regé

Descriptions of violence and torture, including do

Lloyd mentions finding every person that Six has e

Language includes "s--t," "s--tty," "a--hole," "as

Bubblicious chewing gum, Skittles.

Scenes during a rowdy New Year's Eve party that in

Parents need to know that The Gray Man is a secret agent action-thriller movie starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans as men who get caught up in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game. There's lots of violence and references to violence. Scenes include torture, body horror, gun violence, explosions, and domestic…

Positive Messages

Very violent, but courage and perseverance are shown as key elements to staying true to yourself and helping others in need. Integrity is presented as a positive defining attribute of a person, even those who might be unsavory.

Positive Role Models

Six is a killer, but he has an empathetic background and seeks to save those in need, showing integrity. Six also perseveres to save a young girl and shows courage even when his life is on the line.

Diverse Representations

Characters of color (played by Alfre Woodard, Regé-Jean Page, Jessica Henwick, Ana de Armas, and Danush) have influential but not particularly substantial roles. Portrayal of women leaves something to be desired. Dani, Suzanne, and Margaret come across as strong women on the surface, but Dani and Margaret have relatively inconsequential roles, and Margaret sacrifices herself for a male character. Suzanne is portrayed as incompetent at her job and is often undermined and disrespected by her male peers.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Descriptions of violence and torture, including domestic violence. Scenes showing domestic violence, torture, murder, gunfights, explosions, and car crashes. Scenes with body horror (fingernail pulling) and romanticizing a violent lifestyle.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Lloyd mentions finding every person that Six has ever slept with.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes "s--t," "s--tty," "a--hole," "ass," "d--k," "jackass," and "f--k." Exclamatory use of "Chrissakes," "Jesus Christ," "oh my God." Ableist language ("morons").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Scenes during a rowdy New Year's Eve party that includes drinking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Gray Man is a secret agent action-thriller movie starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans as men who get caught up in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game. There's lots of violence and references to violence. Scenes include torture, body horror, gun violence, explosions, and domestic violence. While characters demonstrate perseverance, courage, and integrity, the movie could also be seen as romanticizing a violent lifestyle. Characters use strong language ("f--k," "s--t," and more). To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (10)
• Kids say (15)

Based on 10 parent reviews

The Russo Brothers Continue Delivering Schlock Since Avengers

At the brink of pg-13, what's the story.

THE GRAY MAN tells a cat-and-mouse story involving Six ( Ryan Gosling ), a man hired to become a secret agent for the U.S. government who's later thought to be a liability. In order to neutralize him, Denny Carmichael ( Regé-Jean Page ), the leader of a secretive organization within the CIA, hires rogue contract killer Lloyd Hansen ( Chris Evans ) to take Six out, putting Six's friend and mentor Fitzroy ( Billy Bob Thornton ) and sickly niece Claire (Julia Butters) at risk.

Is It Any Good?

The Gray Man is more a series of great parts than an enthralling whole. It features solid performances by Gosling and Thornton, but the true gem of the movie is Evans, who transforms from Marvel's wholesome Captain America into a sadistic, gleeful, disturbingly charismatic villain. His performance will make you want to see him cast as villains more often, since his good guy looks and charm provide another layer of sinister to evil characters.

The film is a bit of a letdown in terms of racial and gender diversity. On paper, The Gray Man has both characters of color and strong women in potentially substantial roles. But while Page and Alfre Woodard are the standouts in this regard, that has more to do with their personal charisma than with what's written on the page. And even though Ana de Armas plays an agent in the field like Six, her character, Dani, is less defined than his -- and quite bland. Similarly, Jessica Henwick doesn't have much to work with as Suzanne, a CIA agent working under Denny who's constantly belittled by both him and Lloyd. Overall, The Gray Man is a standard-issue spy film that goes in circles with regard to characters' motivations. If you like seeing cars crash and people fight, then this film is for you (as long as you can hang in there for its two-hour-plus run time), but those looking for an engaging story are more likely to find satisfaction in individual performances.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how violence is portrayed in the film. Is it glorified? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

How did Six's past affect his present? Is he an empathetic character, despite his actions and choices?

How does Six show perseverance and courage ? Why are those important character strengths?

How are women portrayed in the film? Are the portrayals helpful, or harmful?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 15, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : July 22, 2022
• Cast : Ryan Gosling , Chris Evans , Billy Bob Thornton , Regé-Jean Page
• Directors : Anthony Russo , Joe Russo
• Inclusion Information : Indigenous actors, Black actors
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Character Strengths : Courage , Integrity , Perseverance
• Run time : 122 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : intense sequences of strong violence, and strong language
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Pop Culture Happy Hour

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'The Gray Man' review: Even on-screen assassins need something to believe in

Linda Holmes

Ryan Gosling as Six in The Gray Man. Paul Abell/Netflix hide caption

Ryan Gosling as Six in The Gray Man.

The Gray Man is very well-made, if unnervingly empty.

That's what the growth of stylish, hyper-violent, technically accomplished, skillfully produced, massively budgeted movies has done. It has cemented the primacy of an entire category of film that can do everything that could possibly be expected of it, everything it means to do, and can still feel made out of nothing. Cast with talented, capital-M-capital-S Movie Stars with the charisma to carry it – in this case, Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans – a movie like The Gray Man can have a lot of pleasures. It can have cleverness, inventiveness, a wink to its embrace of extremely silly set pieces. But there's something that's just not there about it, an unnerving sense that if you unwound the whole thing layer after layer, you'd discover it's wrapped around only itself.

The Gray Man is out in select theaters on Friday, July 15, and on Netflix starting July 22.

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The setup, based on Mark Greaney's 2009 novel, is this: Years ago, to get out of a long prison sentence, the man we know as Six (Ryan Gosling) gave up his identity – name, history, family, connections – and became an assassin, an asset of the United States government, in exchange for his "freedom." He is part of one of those Impossible Mission Force-style teams, the glamour of which is based on the idea that there are limitations on what the government does in the light of day, and that the bravest bad-asses are the ones who ignore those limitations. Six begins the story being sent to kill a guy he doesn't know anything about, but during the mission, things get complicated, and he winds up on the run himself, on the wrong side of his own secret, violent, lawless, unaccountable organization. Whoops? (This basically happens to absolutely every participant in a force like this at some point.)

Six's chilly boss (Regé-Jean Page, just as hot in a suit and glasses as he was on Bridgerton ) wants him tracked down by any means necessary and brings in a private contractor to do the job. That contractor's name is Lloyd Hansen, and he is played by Chris Evans in an unflattering short haircut and a cheap, sleazy little mustache. Lloyd may have imposing arms (in both senses), and he may sometimes show the same flashes of wit that Evans brought to his role in Knives Out , but make no mistake: Both these guys are longtime hired killers, but he is the bad guy. Six is meant to be the good guy, just trying to survive and save Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton), the retired mentor whose continuing safety is now being used as leverage against him. (Hansen is into straight-up torturing people, which we get to/have to watch, and which is one of the many things about the film that raises the question: Look around at the world; do we have to do this right now? )

There are a lot of lively, nicely done bits in The Gray Man : smart uses of reflections, a preposterous but propulsive sequence involving handcuffs and a bench, a solid running gag about the people who keep having to help Six not die, and an underutilized but still effective Ana de Armas doing a lot of very cool fighting. Gosling's dry, exhausted muttering and Evans' cheesy, sleazy, high-energy declarations are an effective matched set. The action doesn't feel phoned-in; it feels stylish, in its way, as does the "everything should look like a nightclub" lighting of much of the movie, including the parts that do not take place in nightclubs.

Rege-Jean Page as Carmichael and Ana de Armas as Dani Miranda. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022 Paul Abell/Netflix hide caption

But The Gray Man feels hollow, and it's not because it needs to be a character-driven drama. It's enough for the stakes to be all about good guys and bad guys; it really is! But in this case, everybody in the story is a merciless killer who does what they're told (we don't necessarily know what kinds of people Six has killed on request) and murders who they're told to murder, pretty much, and picking through the details to differentiate who's good and who's bad feels beside the point.

In the dynamic between Six and Hansen, the inspiration would seem to be Die Hard – with Hansen as the highly competent bad guy you almost root for – except that John McClane was also trying to save a building full of innocent people. Finding all of this unsatisfying is the kind of complaint that gets one tagged as a person who doesn't understand mindless action movies, but lots of mindless action movies don't suffer from this ailment. They find a way to feel built around something solid, whether it's a team or a mission or a particular purpose. Consider, if you will, the fast. Consider, as we must, the furious.

The Gray Man also can't quite work as a story of chaos among amoral chaos agents (the way, say, a mafia story can), because Six and Hansen don't have an existing relationship. In fact, most of these people don't have much in the way of relationships with each other, other than Six and his other mentor, played by Alfre Woodard. The relationship between the two of them feels instantly genuine and compelling, by far the most believable in the movie – but the time we spend with it is comically brief. If everybody is going to be off-the-books hired killers differentiated only at the margins, the stakes have to come from the individuals. Let's have some betrayals, some old wounds, some old arguments, some long-growing resentments. We've got Ryan Gosling and we've got Chris Evans and we've got Ana de Armas; we could even have some sex.

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There's something more interesting hovering around the edges of this project, as is often the case with creatively unsatisfying outings from talented people. The Gray Man is both a celebration of a certain kind of intoxicating, overcranked masculinity and, at times, a mockery of it. Lloyd is terrifying and merciless, but he's also ridiculous. And the basic structure of the film is that Six finds himself in situation after situation in which it appears that he cannot possibly escape (in the manner of James Bond or, if you will, MacGyver), and it repeatedly takes other people – specifically, women – to bail him out. There is a delicate balance in which Six is both a superhuman who survives the obviously unsurvivable, and a fallible guy who keeps getting got. Gosling and Evans both seem to be playing to this potential, to the preposterous manly showdown that neither of them really has the juice to win. But while that idea dances around the margins, the film comes back over and over to a more conventional, more muscular (literally) approach.

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What is missing here is a narrative engine. Call it "John Wick's puppy": the moment that provides even the thinnest thread of something else to care about besides killer versus killer. Of course, it's important to acknowledge that, as in John Wick , many fictional women, mostly wives and girlfriends but also the occasional daughter or colleague, have given their lives on- or off-screen so that men with guns can seem more human, which is also not great. Here, along those lines, you eventually get a vulnerable young girl imperiled, but by the time that happens, it seems wildly cynical.

The directors of The Gray Man are Joe and Anthony Russo, whom you might know from making Marvel movies ( Captain America: The Winter Soldier , Captain America: Civil War , Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame ) that grossed something like six billion dollars worldwide. What they have learned about how to stage a big action sequence with the benefit of a huge budget (reportedly $200 million) shows here. While this is far more bloody than an MCU outing, it's also solidly choreographed, if more than a little silly. It's the kind of movie where a fight takes place around the tubes that are firing off a fireworks display just because ... sure. Why not? Looks cool! It's the kind of movie where a guy in a fight starts throwing around red smoke bombs because ... sure. Looks cool! (I should note: I went to a theatrical screening. Because this is a spectacle, it will be interesting to see how it holds up when seen mostly at home.)

Nothing here seems accidentally or poorly done; these are choices. With all the effort that's gone into the action, the most conspicuous issues with execution are actually in the dialogue. While there are some funny lines, particularly for the two leads, there are also places where a line that's clearly meant to pack a punch sounds like a first draft that needed a couple more passes. You can tell what the line is supposed to do – you are cued by sound and pacing and pauses – but it doesn't quite do it.

Wishing is not critique. It may not be, in the strictest sense, criticism to simply wish everyone involved in a project like this had taken their considerable talent, skill, power, money, imagination, and so forth and done something else. The Gray Man seems to be exactly what it means to be, and in the moment, it's often fun. But there's something eerily vacant in its assembly. Maybe even trained movie assassins need something to believe in.

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The Gray Man

When the CIA's most skilled operative, whose true identity is known to none, accidentally uncovers dark agency secrets, a psychopathic former colleague puts a bounty on his head, setting off... Read all When the CIA's most skilled operative, whose true identity is known to none, accidentally uncovers dark agency secrets, a psychopathic former colleague puts a bounty on his head, setting off a global manhunt by international assassins. When the CIA's most skilled operative, whose true identity is known to none, accidentally uncovers dark agency secrets, a psychopathic former colleague puts a bounty on his head, setting off a global manhunt by international assassins.

• Anthony Russo
• Christopher Markus
• Stephen McFeely
• Ryan Gosling
• Chris Evans
• Ana de Armas
• 2.3K User reviews
• 219 Critic reviews
• 49 Metascore
• 8 nominations

Top cast 89

• Lloyd Hansen

• Dani Miranda

• Suzanne Brewer

• Margaret Cahill

• Laszlo Sosa

• Six's Father

• (as DeObia Oparei)

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans were both encouraged to improvise their lines. Their first character face to face meeting was completely improvised.
• Goofs When leaving Bangkok, Six takes a tuk tuk for Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is located 683 km north of Bangkok. There is no way he could cover this distance in such a short time to the extraction point in an overnight ride.

Lloyd Hansen : Normally at this point in the night, I wouldn't be sticking around. With the house lights about to come on, I'd find a desperate, ugly chick to lick my wounds and split. But you have been a pebble in my shoe since the very beginning, and now I just don't think I can walk away. Guess what I'm thinking right now...

Six : That you've over shared.

• Crazy credits The closing credits run just short of 15 minutes.
• Connections Featured in Amanda the Jedi Show: 'THE GRAY MAN' Netflix's new Mediocre Action Universe: Explained (2022)
• Soundtracks Lochloosa Written by JJ Grey (as John Grey Higginbotham) Performed by JJ Grey & Mofro Courtesy of Fog City Records

User reviews 2.3K

• lovemichaeljordan
• Jul 21, 2022
• How long is The Gray Man? Powered by Alexa
• July 22, 2022 (United States)
• United States
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• Official Netflix
• The Gray Man: Đặc Vụ Vô Hình
• Château de Chantilly, France (Castle in Croatia)
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $200,000,000 (estimated)

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 2 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Surround 7.1
• Dolby Digital

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The Gray Man Review: Freewheeling Chris Evans Is The Best Part of This Action Movie Letdown

If only the rest of the movie were having as much fun

Chris Evans, The Gray Man

It's hard to know for sure what goes on behind the scenes, but there is ample evidence to suggest that Chris Evans had a great time shooting The Gray Man . In this Netflix original directed by Joe and Anthony Russo , he plays the baddie, Lloyd Hansen, an ex-CIA agent turned sociopathic gun-for-hire. Looking beefier than ever (bigger biceps even than Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Love and Thunder ? I'd need to get out my tape measure) he giddily chomps up the scenery, wiggling and giggling (you read that right) his way though this otherwise rote action-adventure picture.

The direction seems to have been "go nuts, do whatever!" and his instincts serve him well. Though chiseled from concrete, he practically minces when he gets hurt (which is often), sometimes delivers lines like Bill Murray would, and sports a goofy mustache that, somehow, he restrains himself from twirling.

Evans's performance is, alas, the only notable thing in this preposterous, globe-trotting movie with so many cliché moments of barked dialogue it comes this close to sounding like a Saturday Night Live parody. What's worse is that a movie like this lives or dies by its action set pieces, and many of them absolutely fall apart due to cheap-looking CG. (This is where Netflix's PR side may have flubbed; critics were shown the film in a theater, though most will watch it at home. Maybe it looks better smaller?)

The Gray Man

• Chris Evans is having a blast
• One outdoor action sequence is a thrill
• Most of the action is underwhelming
• The spy stuff is too cliché
• Talented stars are underused

Ryan Gosling plays the gray man of the title — he is a convicted killer yanked from prison by Billy Bob Thornton to exist "in the shadows" of the CIA, executing operations too thorny to have on any official record. Naturally, he's the best — beyond Bond, beyond Bourne. But someone in the agency wants to take this rogue wing out now that Gosling (who goes by Six) possesses a microchip that can bring the whole system crashing down.

Six starts his adventure in Bangkok, then heads to Chiang Mai, somewhere in Turkey, Vienna, Prague, and, finally, a castle in Croatia. Hansen, hired by the same CIA that once sacked him, puts down his torture equipment in Morocco, heads to Azerbaijan, then Berlin, then — oh, did I mention a big Hong Kong flashback? — well, the point is I hope everyone collected miles on the same airline. There are some outstanding establishing shots before most of the action goes indoors for under-lit fight scenes.

I say most of the action because, to be fair, a big sequence in Prague is quite thrilling. This is because it is outside, where you can see what's happening. You would think that big fancy filmmakers like the Russos — who have directed two of the top five worldwide grossers ever, somehow — would not need a tip like this from a guy like me, but life is full of surprises. Alas, the Prague shootout eventually devolves into a highjacked train gag that collapses under the weight of poorly rendered CGI.

The other travesty in this film is that Ana de Armas is third billed and given absolutely nothing to do. She's only one of the most vibrant, alluring, and charismatic performers of our day, and she gets no splashy spotlight, no good zingers and, most frustratingly, no good outfits. Did the Russos not see No Time To Die ? It's as if they looked at her dazzling scenes from that film and deliberately did the opposite.

For a Netflix action picture with huge stars, The Gray Man is better, certainly, than Red Notice , but not as good as Extraction . And Extraction is far from a masterpiece. Gosling is paired with a precocious kid for some of the movie ( Julia Butters ) and it's just so preposterous one simply has to laugh. I guess laughing is good, so, in that way, The Gray Man is good, too.

Watching The Gray Man will not ruin your day, and Chris Evans fans will have something to sink their teeth into. (Gosling is fine, but plays it all rather straight.) But, I dunno, it's July. Maybe go outside? Finish that book you put aside? Unlike a convict indentured to a black ops unit, you have options.

Premieres:  Friday, July 22 on Netflix Who's in it:  Chris Evans, Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas Who's behind it:   Joe Russo (director, producer), Anthony Russo (director, producer) For fans of:   Chris Evans hamming it up

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The Gray Man review: Russo Brothers' globe-trotting thriller delivers movie stars and mayhem

Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans go mano a mano as two improbably pretty assassins with no mercy (or relaxed-fit chinos) to spare.

He will strangle them in Hong Kong; he will kill them in Manilla. He leaves a trail of broken bones in Rome and an asteroid-size pile of rubble in Vienna. (Which seems like it should fall under some kind of UNESCO heritage laws, though who's got time for those?) Sierra Six ( Ryan Gosling ) is a government agent, but an extremely off-the-books one, which is why they call him the Gray Man: He's vapor, an assassin without a name or a past or a place he calls home. And, with the help of half of Hot Hollywood, he leaves a swath of destruction and fitted pants across several continents in the Russo Brothers ' latest slice of post-Marvel pandemonium (on Netflix July 22) — a maximalist action thriller that is almost comically violent, unfailingly glib, and intermittently very fun.

If you want backstory, you'll get it in one vanishingly brief early scene and a few fuzzy flashbacks later: Gosling's lone wolf was once a lowly young inmate imprisoned for murder until an unflappable fixer named Donald Fitzroy ( Billy Bob Thornton , an elder statesman here) came along with a better offer — join the C.I.A., and trade his wet-work skill set for freedom and unlimited travel opportunities. But when Six, as he's been code-named, takes down a target in a Bangkok nightclub, his mark's dying words make him question what cause he's actually serving after years of active duty. Are they having him eliminate his own coworkers?

There's a sympathetic fellow agent, Dani ( Ana de Armas ), to help him figure that out, and a puffed-up, unscrupulous supervisor, Denny Carmichichael (an amusingly snide Regé-Jean Page , freed from his Bridgerton britches) determined to end him before he gets the chance. To speed things up, Denny has grabbed Donald's tween-ish niece ( Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 's Julia Butters) as collateral and brought on a freelance mercenary called Lloyd Hansen ( Chris Evans ) to obliterate Six by any means necessary and retrieve all evidence of the C.I.A.'s dirty deeds.

There's a lot of chum in the water — the various teams dispatched to take down Six die like plankton, quick and anonymous — but not many small actors to fill out the supporting roles. Nearly every minor character in The Gray Man is played by someone interesting, from Alfre Woodard as a shrewd ex-department head and Narcos ' Wagner Moura as a squirrely informant with a fondness for knitting and oubliettes, to Bollywood star Dhanush as a dapper adversary and Game of Thrones' Jessica Henwick as a special-ops officer who might actually have a conscience.

But Evans, smirking like a catbird, is the movie's main antagonist, and his pairing with Gosling is the pretty-man Godzilla vs. Kong most viewers came to see. Though he's played Captain America for Anthony and Joe Russo many times over, most recently in Avengers: Endgame , the actor seems positively giddy every time he gets to flip to the role of, as some have fondly come to call him, America's A-hole. Here everything about Lloyd, from his fascist little mustache to his schoolyard taunts, delights him; against Six's wry cool-guy remove, he's the leering frat-boy jester, pretty much begging to be punched in that perfectly symmetrical face.

And the punches do come, in combat scenes so relentlessly kinetic and busy they make Fight Club feel like Tai Chi. Rendered largely in the bang-pow crunch of brute video-game force and tinged with slapstick comedy, the action unfolds in a series of wild, adrenalized set pieces — in a maze, at a hospital, on a disintegrating airplane — across global capitals that the Russos swap out as easily as Zoom backdrops. Gosling, tasked with playing the kind of man who kills indiscriminately but would probably also pause to free a kitten from a tree, brings a minor-key melancholy beneath the swollen soldier-of-fortune deltoids. He seems to know what we do: that title aside, this isn't the kind of movie interested in shades of gray. It's red-meat candy, a Bourne Identity for brains thoroughly trained in over-stimulation, and already long gone on summer holiday. Grade: B –

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The Gray Man Review

The boring identity..

The Gray Man is in theaters on July 15, 2022, and will stream on Netflix on July 22.

With an all-star cast led by Ryan Gosling as a CIA hitman on the run, The Gray Man builds itself using the spare parts and superficial flourishes of much better action films. It’s a serviceable impression directed by Joe & Anthony Russo, who, along with co-writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, were responsible for a huge chunk of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (most recently, Avengers: Endgame ). But where the MCU is often criticized for its lack of discernible style, The Gray Man is a product of too many conflicting approaches with no unifying vision — not unlike their previous effort, the Tom Holland-fronted Cherry — resulting in a spy movie mish-mash that takes far too long to be enjoyable.

Based on the novel series by Mark Greaney (a frequent collaborator of the late Tom Clancy), The Gray Man is Netflix’s latest shot at a first installment in a hopeful franchise (see also: The Old Guard ). The streaming giant reportedly cut the Russos a mammoth check of $200 million, but this investment is rarely reflected by the film’s flimsy, textureless appearance that makes exotic locations feel cheap, and complicated fight scenes seem hastily strung together. At its center is a tale where nearly every character feels cut whole-cloth from a spy movie parody, speaking in broad espionage terminology alone, and rarely exhibiting an ounce of humanity. There is perhaps one major exception — or an attempt at such — in the form of Chris Evans’ suave, sociopathic private sector hitman Lloyd Hansen, who chases Gosling’s character, codenamed Sierra Six, across much of the 129-minute runtime. But Evans’ role ends up too blinkered in its adherence to “type,” and too singular in its attempts to project tongue-in-cheek villainy, to leave a lasting impression.

A brief prologue set in 2003 depicts Six’s recruitment from a jail cell by agency operative Donald “Fitz” Fitzroy (a de-aged Billy Bob Thornton), before the film skips forward 18 years, with Six caught in the middle of a Bangkok hit where things don’t feel quite right. Assisted by field agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas, in a less layered version of her role in No Time To Die ), and questionable instructions by his ruthless new boss, the young hot-shot Denny Carmichael ( Bridgerton ’s Regé-Jean Page), Six does things his own way and creates a ruckus at a flashy nightclub, leading to a barely comprehensible fist-fight with his target, which ends with him acquiring secret data that threatens the Agency’s operations.

What follows takes its cues from Skyfall , the Bourne Trilogy, a few Missions: Impossible, and even John Wick , but it never manages to create a character or action sequence as memorable as any of its inspirations. Gosling, while he spearheads the film’s quippy, self-effacing dialog — oh yes, The Gray Man is particularly Marvel-esque in this regard — is largely left adrift by a script that doesn’t so much as give Six a discernible personality trait, let alone a real objective beyond surviving militarized attack number X, before making his way to Asian or European location number Y in anticipation of the next big sequence. Attempts are made to give him something of a heart, by introducing the complication of Fitz’s kidnapped niece (Julia Butters) — whose history with Six is revealed through a lengthy and awkwardly structured flashback that stops the movie dead; The Gray Man loves its time jumps! — but Six isn’t so much a person as he is an amalgam of cinematic ideas, none of which are given the requisite breathing room. The title is explained as a reference to his morality, but the film’s moral dimensions are so swiftly smoothed over as to be completely moot.

What's the best Ryan Gosling movie?

The majority of the cast is similarly shackled by the edit’s need to zip from scene to scene without a lasting human moment. De Armas isn’t so much doe-eyed as she is a deer in the headlights; she’s a more than capable actress, but she struggles here to so much as spin a questioning glance from the story’s abyss. Even poor Jessica Henwick, who plays Carmichael’s second in command, is saddled only with occasional objections and observations about Hansen’s destructive methods, in order to give the film the appearance of conscience or dilemma — the CIA needs to assassinate people the “right” way, quietly and legally; how brave — until The Gray Man recalls that Henwick may be useful in some potential sequel, granting her a last-second usefulness that only serves to rob tension from existing scenes.

Evans’ Hansen is touted as a sociopath, but he’s less intimidating than Dear Evan Hansen ; perhaps Evans is too straightforward a performer, or perhaps there was little provided by the writers and directors for him to tap into, with regards to the character’s diabolical villainy. The contrast between his vicious M.O. and his loafers and designer casual-wear comes off as aggressively plain rather than intriguing, given the broad nothingness of his demeanor. What’s more, the film actually features a superior example of this archetype, albeit briefly, in the form of a character called “Lone Wolf,” one of the many John Wick-esque assassins set loose by Hansen in his contracted pursuit of Six. Lone Wolf is played by Indian actor Dhanush, a superstar in Tamil cinema, and while he only features in a handful of scenes (and his only recognizable trait is a vaguely orientalist idea of “honor”), his combination of patterned suit and graceful movements during his fight scenes captures the kind of harmonious clash between cruelty and style the film so desperately wants from Evans.

Speaking of style, The Gray Man makes it crystal clear that the Russos’ copy-paste visual approach is unworkable. Their Bourne-esque quick cuts for hand-to-hand combat lack visceral impact. Their occasional riffing on John Wick’s gun-fu provides occasional clarity, but even in their most legible medium and wide shots, there’s no sense of composition to draw the eye, and little by way of lighting and color to accentuate mood (comparing the film’s title to its muddy color grading would almost be too easy). The brothers even add drone shots to their repertoire, but seemingly at random. Where Michael Bay’s Ambulance used drones to turn a chase into a four-dimensional roller coaster, the Russos simply deploy the technology for the occasional establishing shot, or as connective tissue when they can’t figure out how to move from one part of a fight scene to another.

Eventually, The Gray Man morphs into a watchable, mid-2000s thriller — the kind you’d rent on DVD because the cover featured crosshairs, redacted documents, and maybe a wilting American flag — but by the time it gets there, so much breath is wasted on creating non-characters that its last-minute attempts at emotional intimacy have no legs left to stand on. It’s a movie about nothing and no one in particular, and it isn’t even pretty to look at.

Netflix Spotlight: July 2022

An impression of much better action films, spy thriller The Gray Man (directed by Joe & Anthony Russo) wastes its all-star cast by giving them little to work with beyond quips. While it eventually becomes watchable, it spends most of its runtime being visually and emotionally indecipherable.

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Not yet available for streaming.

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The Gray Man Review

15 Jul 2022

The Gray Man

After the misshapen but fascinating left-turn of their last film, Cherry , Joe and Anthony Russo are back with a bang — several, in fact, all loud and expensive-looking. The directing brothers responsible for the remarkable one-two punch of Infinity War and Endgame return to blockbuster cinema in fine fettle with this assured, energetic, consistently compelling caper.

It has all the trappings of a modern espionage action-thriller: there is an air-mile-heavy international itinerary, a USB drive MacGuffin, a web of shady conspiracies that goes all the way to the top — and at the centre of it all, a gun-for-hire struggling with what it means to be a good man. Based on the novels by Mark Greaney, the temptation to make Bourne or Bond comparisons are all there, but the Russos’ regular screenwriters, Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus, are self-aware enough to do it for you. Their script, which leans on the genre’s tropes without escaping them, gently leavens any overt seriousness with the occasional grenade of glibness.

Key to that balancing of tones are the film’s opposing A-list leads, Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Very much two sides of the same incredibly handsome coin, their respective allegiances are handily signposted by facial hair (to wit: beard = goodie; moustache = baddie). Both are electrically watchable — Evans, in particular, gleefully pisses on Captain America’s legacy to portray the kind of villain that even Thanos would consider a bit rude. His Lloyd is really just a weapons-grade asshole, who trades in, by his own admission, “bad ethics and zero impulse control”. He’s a ton of fun to watch.

Gosling is still effortlessly good, by turns winkingly charming and brutally convincing.

Gosling is more reserved by comparison — it’s another taciturn role where he uses his preternatural looks as a deadpan shield — but he’s still effortlessly good, by turns winkingly charming and brutally convincing, sprinkling pathos and humanity into his hardened CIA off-books killer. As far as first-time action-blockbuster roles go, Gosling looks like he’s been dodging fireballs for years.

Which is handy, because he has to do a lot of that. There are nine giant action sequences scattered throughout the running time, featuring explosive fireworks (in the opening fight, literally so), across planes, trams and automobiles. While you might feel the CGI in some moments, the Russos’ action here is more Winter Soldier than Infinity War — lots of ground-level, stylishly shot, muscular hand-to-hand combat.

There’s so much, in fact, that it’s really an action film first, spy thriller second. Anyone expecting a John le Carré potboiler should look elsewhere. There’s not much room for character work outside of those lead two, either — Ana de Armas isn’t given the opportunity to steal scenes in the way she did in No Time To Die . But while it might sometimes feel like relatively superficial entertainment, it is undeniably damned entertaining, and confidently executed. If sequels are coming, as has been hinted, we’re ready for the next 49 shades of Gray.

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‘The Gray Man’ Review: The Russos’ $200 Million Netflix Blockbuster Is the Summer’s Blandest Movie

David ehrlich.

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Good news for people who’ve always wanted to see the fake movies that Chris Evans ’ “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” character — blowhard action star Lucas Lee — made before exploding into a pile of coins at the bottom of a Toronto staircase: Netflix just spent at least $200 million to shoot one for real. Despite being adapted from Mark Greaney’s 2009 spy novel of the same name, “ The Gray Man ” feels like it was even more directly extrapolated from the poster for Lee’s blockbuster smash “You Just Don’t Exist,” which features a photo of Evans grimacing into a telephone above a tagline that reads: “Cole Hazard just got a call saying he has 89 minutes to live… from himself.”

In fairness to Anthony and Joe Russo , whose post-“Avengers” output also includes directing one of 2021’s worst films (“ Cherry ”) and producing one of 2022’s best (“ Everything Everywhere All at Once ”), “The Gray Man” dares to flip the old Lucas Lee formula on its ass. Yes, Evans still spends most of this movie threatening people over the phone, but here he’s been cast as the bad guy; it’s Ryan Gosling who’s been cast in the Cole Hazard role, the iconic “Barbie Set Photos” star playing CIA killer Court Gentry (codename: Sierra Six).

And this time, the call he gets from his future self is coming from inside the house, or at least from another room in the Bangkok skyscraper where Court has been dispatched to assassinate Sierra Four, a fellow mercenary in the black ops program that recruited Court out of prison and offered him “freedom” in exchange for a lifetime of doing America’s dirty work. Sierra Four reminds our hero that gray men don’t get to retire, and — with his dying breath — cautions Sierra Six that he’ll be the CIA’s next target. Spoiler alert: You’ll wish he only had 89 minutes to live.

So begins a “blockbuster” so big that you can actually feel the price of your Netflix subscription going up with each new scene, this listless simulacrum of a summer action movie bouncing from one lavish Asian or European location to the next as it searches in vain for the streamer’s first bonafide popcorn franchise. The algorithmic results don’t reflect well on the Russo brothers’ directing chops — their monumental spandex operas seldom required and never displayed the kind of muscular imagination needed to stage Michael Bay-like fight sequences — but “The Gray Man” is even more damning for Netflix itself, particularly so far as it epitomizes the streamer’s penchant for producing mega-budget movies that feel like glorified deepfakes of classic multiplex fare.

Netflix tends to succeed when it empowers people to create art that no other studio would fund (“The Irishman”) or support as strongly (“The Lost Daughter”), but it nosedives into the uncanny valley of “content” whenever it tries to replicate the same Hollywood fare that it’s determined to replace. “The Gray Man” is not and was never going to be as insufferable as the Rawson Thurber Marshall joint it dethrones as Netflix’s most expensive original feature, but it’s somehow even more soulless for how shamelessly it launders the things that used to make going to the movies in the middle of July so much fun. Where “Red Notice” was at least dumb and cartoonish in uniquely modern ways, “The Gray Man” feels like it was generated by a neural network that had been forced to watch every “Jason Bourne” sequel at gunpoint. Where that film used all of its muscle to squeeze an ounce of chemistry from a cast of human brands, this one seems perversely determined not to distill even the faintest trace of charisma from some of the world’s most winning stars, exciting new talents, and veteran character actors.

To that point, my very first thought during “The Gray Man” was how good it is to hear Gosling’s voice again. The actor has been AWOL since “First Man” in 2018, and his smooth Canadian slur kicks things off on such a viscerally unique tone that it’s tempting to forgive the triteness of the Joe Russo, Christopher Markus, and Stephen McFeely dialogue he’s delivering with it. We meet Court Gentry during a flashback to his days in prison, when the young inmate is visited by a CIA suit by the name of Donald Fitzroy (MVP Billy Bob Thornton, his Saltine-dry performance splintering into unexpected new shapes while everyone around him is just thirsty for something to do). You know the drill: Court does the whole “sarcastic delinquent” routine while Fitzroy reads through his file for our benefit, eventually offering Court a get-out-of-jail-free card in exchange for his mortal soul. “You’d exist in the gray,” the aging spy admin tells his potential new recruit, “but it’ll all be worth it for those sweet, sweet view hours.”

Okay, maybe that last part goes unspoken. The truth is that Court’s new life as Sierra Six doesn’t seem to offer all that many rewards. When the film cuts forward to the present, we find that the CIA has neutered the once-pugnacious Court into a dead-behind-the-eyes murder drone who does what he’s told, with most of his orders coming from the transparently corrupt shitbag who replaced the retired Fitzroy as head of the Sierra program (Denny Carmichael is played by “Bridgerton” sensation Regé-Jean Page, miserable in the role of a gallingly basic villain who ends most of his scenes by throwing a cup or a plate at his office wall in frustration).

It isn’t long before Carmichael decides he needs to cover up his tracks and end the Sierra program with extreme prejudice, so he dispatches his second-in-command Suzanne Brewer (Jessica Henwick, as suffocated here as she was shine-off-the-screen transcendent in “The Matrix Resurrections”) to get the job done, Carmichael making it clear that he’s going to run out of kitchenware if she doesn’t catch  J̶a̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶B̶o̶u̶r̶n̶e̶ Court Gentry soon. Well, that proves easier said than done — even after Carmichael kidnaps Fitzroy’s pre-teen niece, played by “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” highlight Julia Butters — leaving the CIA is left no choice but to bust out the big guns and hire Chris Evans’ psychopathic mercenary, Lloyd Hansen.

And let me tell you, this Lloyd guy isn’t just regular nuts, he’s mustache nuts. Most demented action movie antagonists roll up wearing a suit or some kind of function-oriented body armor, but not Lloyd. No, Lloyd stalks Court from Baku to Berlin dressed like he’s on his way to a key party in suburban Connecticut circa 1973, complete with skin-tight knit polos, butt-hugging slacks, and an endless supply of smarmy one-liners like “Make him dead,” and everyone’s favorite, already immortalized in the trailer: “If you want to make an omelet, you gotta kill some people.” At one point he chides someone for saying “preternatural,” because “that’s an asshole word.” It’s like watching Captain America cosplay as Vince Vaughn in a performance that feels like he’s constantly looking for a chance to stick his tongue into someone’s ear. A more interesting film would have let him, or at least allowed the character’s freak flag to fly at higher than half-mast.

Evans has always been repugnantly sharp for someone so handsome — even if the actor himself has yet to acknowledge the sheer comic perfection of his Freddie Prinze Jr. parody in “Not Another Teen Movie” — and his heel turn in “Knives Out” proved that he knows how to salt up his screen presence when a part calls for that. Alas, with the possible exception of his stint as Buzz Lightyear and that one scene in “Snowpiercer” where he monologues about eating babies, Evans has never been flatter or less funny than he is here. Lloyd would seem to be a natural foil for someone as stoic as Sierra Six, but his character never develops beyond the premise of “what if there was a bad guy named Lloyd?” Not for nothing, but Lloyd is also a terrible manager, even going so far as to execute the one freelance mercenary who actually does something to contribute (and in full view of his team!). The guy doesn’t seem crazy so much as he is careless, and the turnover rate among his assassins must be abysmal.

Of course, Sierra Six doesn’t help with that. There are a wide array of action sequences in “The Gray Man,” all of which end with Gosling killing a handful of Lloyd’s henchmen without breaking a sweat. Not unlike the setpieces in the Russos’ “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” most of the fights here are just visceral and compelling enough to hit you over the head with their untapped potential.

A crunchy but chaotic mid-air brawl resolves with an apathy that’s wild to see at this level (I’m calling for a ban on action scenes where cars plummet out of planes until we figure out what’s going on), while a climactic firefight on the grounds of a moonlit French chateau proves repetitive long before the Russos throw in the towel and settle for the old “lost in a hedge maze” routine. Sometimes the camera flies through a fight as if it were strapped to a jet-powered drone, that empty sizzle failing to compensate for the palpable lack of craft. The Tamil star Dhanush — who drops into “The Gray Man” for just long enough to make you wish you were watching a more colorful kind of blockbuster — doesn’t even stick around for the finale. He literally looks at the camera, laments a certain lack of integrity, and peaces out. Good for him. Ana de Armas doesn’t get so clean an exit, but she has no trouble flexing her action star bonafides as Court’s most valuable ally.

Only a sprawling chase through the streets of Vienna manages to achieve a coherent sense of scale or velocity — it’s always nice to see trams get some time in the spotlight — even that sequence is short on memorable beats of destruction, and Court’s unflappability isn’t a satisfying enough grace note for a character with so little else to offer beyond his cool. His silly reaction shot at the end of the scene’s last stunt speaks to a larger problem with the role.

Gosling is a great choice to play an implosive spy with a good heart and some long-suppressed family issues (I won’t reveal the uncredited actor who plays Court’s father, but he gives what might just be the most thankless two-scene performance in the history of film), and yet the character’s mottled contours are buried too deep to feel. Perhaps they’ll become more compelling in future installments — a sequel is already in the works — but that’s little consolation after sitting through an entire movie that needs Court’s search for Fitzroy’s kidnapped niece to double as a chance for self-discovery.

The only detail about Court that stuck with me is the character’s Sisyphus tattoo, which “The Gray Man” allows Gosling to explain with typically casual panache. More than just an obvious metaphor for a guy who’s trudging uphill to get out from under his government’s thumb, the imagery also seems to reflect Netflix’s entire approach to blockbuster movies. The streamer appears determined to keep pushing $200 million boulders up the hill for all eternity, no matter how futile the company’s mission to bring the multiplex experience to your couch. Then again, the Netflix model doesn’t care how many boulders roll back down to the bottom — it only cares about how long we stick around to watch.

“The Gray Man” will open in select theaters on Friday, July 15. It will be available to stream on Netflix starting Friday, July 22.

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‘The Gray Man’ Review Roundup: A ‘Throwback’ Action Movie That’s ‘Listless’ and Full of ‘Tropes and Cliches’

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Wednesday night was the premiere of “The Gray Man,” the Russo Brothers ‘ ambitious action thriller that, with a budget of $200 million, is the most expensive movie Netflix has ever made. On Thursday, the review embargo for the film lifted, bringing with it a generally underwhelmed response from critics.

The film stars Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans as Court Gentry and Lloyd Hansen. Gentry is on the run from Hansen after coming into possession of top-secret CIA information, and Hansen is unforgiving in his efforts to chase Gentry down. Ana de Armas also stars as Dani Miranda, alongside Regé-Jean Page, Jessica Henwick, Julia Butters, Dhanush, Alfre Woodard and Billy Bob Thornton.

Overall, most critics agree that “The Gray Man” is an over-the-top attempt by Netflix to capture the magic of blockbuster thrillers like the 007 movies. Gosling, Evans, de Armas and their co-stars show their talents, but the majority of reviews criticize its cliched script and breakneck pacing. Despite some issues, a few critics conceded that even with its flaws, the film is still a fun watch, and the strong ensemble makes it worth a viewer’s time to see what this big-budget blockbuster is really about.

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Read some highlights of what critics are saying below:

Popular on Variety

Variety’s Peter Debruge :

There’s nothing terribly original about the storytelling. Take a little of “Shooter,” a lot of “John Wick,” add a dash of Jason Bourne, shaken (but not stirred) into the license-to-kill formula, and you’ve got the basic idea. What makes “The Gray Man” exciting — and let’s not beat around the bush: This is the most exciting original action property Netflix has delivered since “Bright” — are the shades the ensemble bring to their characters and the little ways in which the Russos come through where those other films fell short.

IndieWire’s David Ehrlich :

So begins a “blockbuster” so big that you can actually feel the price of your Netflix subscription going up with each new scene, this listless simulacrum of a summer action movie bouncing from one lavish Asian or European location to the next as it searches in vain for the streamer’s first bonafide popcorn franchise. The algorithmic results don’t reflect well on the Russo brothers’ directing chops — their monumental spandex operas seldom required and never displayed the kind of muscular imagination needed to stage Michael Bay-like fight sequences — but “The Gray Man” is even more damning for Netflix itself, particularly so far as it epitomizes the streamer’s penchant for producing mega-budget movies that feel like glorified deepfakes of classic multiplex fare.

The AV Club’s Luke Y. Thompson :

For the most part, Netflix’s The “Gray Man” is a damn delight. It’s a throwback to the days when studios could safely rely on throwing a couple of A-listers at an action script and some big explosions, give it a competent director, and have a hit on their hands. Frequently more fun and escapist than some of the recent James Bond films, it’s also based on a book character (though not highly advertised as such). Ryan Gosling plays Mark Greaney’s freelance assassin and former CIA operative Court Gentry, a name the movie largely eschews in favor of his code designation, Sierra Six. For Gosling fans whose favorite movie was Drive, this feels like a slightly pumped up, dumbed-down version of that character, with significantly more to say about how he doesn’t actually have more to say.

Entertainment Weekly’s Leah Greenblatt :

But Evans, smirking like a catbird, is the movie’s main antagonist, and his pairing with Gosling is the pretty-man Godzilla vs. Kong most viewers came to see. Though he’s played Captain America for Anthony and Joe Russo many times over, most recently in “Avengers: Endgame,” the actor seems positively giddy every time he gets to flip to the role of, as some have fondly come to call him, America’s A-hole. Here everything about Lloyd, from his fascist little mustache to his schoolyard taunts, delights him; against Six’s wry cool-guy remove, he’s the leering frat-boy jester, pretty much begging to be punched in that perfectly symmetrical face.

IGN’s Siddhant Adlakha :

The majority of the cast is similarly shackled by the edit’s need to zip from scene to scene without a lasting human moment. De Armas isn’t so much doe-eyed as she is a deer in the headlights; she’s a more than capable actress, but she struggles here to so much as spin a questioning glance from the story’s abyss. Even poor Jessica Henwick, who plays Carmichael’s second in command, is saddled only with occasional objections and observations about Hansen’s destructive methods, in order to give the film the appearance of conscience or dilemma — the CIA needs to assassinate people the “right” way, quietly and legally; how brave — until “The Gray Man” recalls that Henwick may be useful in some potential sequel, granting her a last-second usefulness that only serves to rob tension from existing scenes.

Forbes’ Scott Mendelson :

Gosling says and does little of entertainment value, which is more about the screenplay that positions him as a generic action figure. Ditto Ana de Armas as Gosling’s reluctant tag-along gal. Evans chews up the scenery, but most of his one-liners and zingers come off as preordained memes and gif moments that exist in a vacuum. All three of them do little more than remind us of better movies where they played similar characters. Billy Bob Thornton and Alfre Woodard, playing two elder agents trying to survive with dignity as the world passes them by, do their best to elevate their material. Rising star Julia Butters holds her own even though she is quickly made a full-time hostage/damsel. Perhaps by default, the attempt by this film to recapture the glory days of the Hollywood action movie can’t help but revert to past-their-time tropes and cliches.

USA Today’s Brian Truitt :

In their post-Marvel work, the Russos have notably given their superhero stars room to stretch. Last year’s ambitious “Cherry” allowed Tom Holland to flex some dramatic muscles beyond getting in a Spider-Man suit, and “The Gray Man” lets Evans deliciously explore his wicked side. Yes, he is the best of the “Chrises,” and him doing a complete 180 from virtuous Captain America proves that once again: Lloyd yells at underlings, goes punch for punch and snark for snark with Gosling, and absolutely owns a plethora of clever zingers like, “If you want to make an omelet, you gotta kill some people.” If you’re craving an overblown action movie, “The Gray Man” is probably worth a stream for him alone, a devilish villain playing an otherwise forgettable spy game.

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The Gray Man Reviews

While the adrenaline-filled film boasts an all-star cast, top-notch camera-work and impressive stunt work, it lacks in character development and story giving us concepts we’ve seen over and over.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 16, 2024

For myself, star performances and expensive grand sets are two non-negotiable ingredients of a blockbuster. The Russo brothers’ newest film has both. (And maybe it’s just a two-ingredient genre film, but that’s perfectly fine with me).

Full Review | Jul 16, 2024

This movie will more than likely just be a random grey blank spot in your memory within a few days.

Full Review | Original Score: 5.5/10 | Jul 12, 2024

It's like somebody rabbit-punching your brain for the best part of two hours, and there's a certain enjoyability in that.

Full Review | Feb 7, 2024

The Russo brothers’ supposed answer to the Bond franchise is a product of popcorn entertainment that is defined by giving the audience what they want and that’s just it.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2023

Netflix’s The Gray Man is its Most Expensive and Emptiest Star Vehicle

In short, the movie looks like someone painted over each frame of the film with urine. The whole thing has this sickly yellow tint to it that's even more off-putting than the usual teal-and-orange colour grading of most big-budget blockbusters.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 29, 2023

Given Netflix’s expenditures and the star pedigree on screen, audiences deserve — and should expect — more.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 9, 2023

If not an all-timer within a tried-and-tested genre, The Gray Man is a strong showcase for its leads, their screen presence and ability to carry the source material which can be overloading with exposition on occasion.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2023

A flat out AWESOME! An action packed spy thrill ride that mixes the best of Winter Soldier, Fast/Furious, & John Wick. Ryan Gosling is that ACTION HERO…

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

The Gray Man is just expensive, glamour-less, and unsharp.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 25, 2023

If you've seen the trailer, you've basically seen the film; it is an underwhelming affair that sounds great on paper, but isn't executed well enough to be memorable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 24, 2023

The Gray Man is a wannabe John Wick lost in a tonally incohesive script. You’ve seen this movie before you even press play.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

The Russo Brothers return with a star-studded action thriller in Netflix’s The Gray Man that’s great where the heart is concerned but nothing special overall.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2023

The Gray Man is a sad affair. As a fan of Ryan Gosling, as a fan of Ana De Armas, as a fan of Dhanush, as a fan of action cinema, this is sad.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 20, 2023

We begin a 129 min journey jam-packed with quippy retorts, gratuitous violence and a hail of bullets that leap you chuckling and wiping tears of laughter from your eyes. That being said, The Gray Man is entirely devoid of substance.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 20, 2023

Unfortunately this did not flow for me. Gosling on paper seemed to be a very interesting character, but instead his character don't have real progression or likability. Then the action just wasn't up to par with what we've seen this amazing directors do

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Dec 26, 2022

Despite its fast-paced rhythm and the caliber of the talent in front and behind the camera, it ends up being an unimaginative and formulaic spy flick. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 5, 2022

What I also loved about this movie was the lack of an unneeded romantic subplot, and the fact that all the females in the cast weren’t brainless skirts simply there to fix the men or let them save their life.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Sep 9, 2022

If you can remember much about it 15 minutes after watching, you'll have a stronger impression than it made on me.

Full Review | Sep 7, 2022

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‘More Bland Than Bond’: Critics Shred Netflix’s Most Expensive Movie Ever

Published: 25 July 2022 , Last Updated:  8 May 2024

How much would you pay to see Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans run around shooting pistols at each other for two hours? $10? $20? Well, for one ailing streaming service, USD$200 million was the final figure and it might have been a little too much. The initial reviews suggest Netflix ‘s big-budget action blockbuster The Gray Man  is as bland as the colour for which it is named. Oh, dear.

Originally touted as the answer to Netflix’s dwindling subscriber numbers,  The Gray Man has all the hallmarks of a bonafide hit – Two massive Hollywood stars, the directing duo behind a Marvel smash and an endless cavalcade of shootouts. It should be the recipe for success (keep in mind Chris Hemsworth sent streams sky-high with his light-on-plot, heavy-on-action flick Extraction   back in 2019).

But sadly, while fans have been champing at the bit for another bruising encounter with Chris Evans , Ana de Armas and Ryan Gosling, critics have not been kind. The film has only received a lukewarm 49 per cent approval rating from 59 critics on Rotten Tomatoes (at the time of writing). So where did  The Gray Man  go wrong?

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, the brothers that brought us Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame,  the new film stars Gosling as Court Genry AKA Sierra Six – a CIA operative who uncovers a dark secret. From there, he finds himself in a brutal cat and mouse game, hunted by former CIA colleague Lloyd Hansen, played by Chris Evans, who will stop at nothing to destroy Six.

With an enviable cast and a reported USD$200 million budget, expectations were seriously high for the streamer’s new flick, but it hasn’t entirely translated to success. Film critic Robbie Collin from The Telegraph gave the film just two stars, claiming “Netflix squanders millions on an action film that’s more bland than Bond”.

Collin’s sentiments were echoed by The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, who described  The Gray Man  as “the action-thriller equivalent of a conscientiously microwaved Tuscan Sausage Penne from M&S.”

According to Bradshaw, where  The Gray Man falls down is simply in its execution. The critic noted that while there was plenty of drama, the film lacked heart, jumping frantically between exotic locations.

In the interest of full disclosure, it’s worth pointing out that we actually haven’t seen the film yet, so it’s hard to tell if Collin and Bradshaw were just having a bad day (no Maltesers at the candy bar, no doubt), but if there’s one review we generally reserve our judgements for – it’s Roger Ebert ‘s. Needless to say, the film critic extraordinaire did not disappoint.

“ The Gray Man should be joyously over-the-top if it wants to be a new Fast & Furious or Bourne franchise but with the exception of a wisecracking Evans, everything here feels so programmatically dull. It’s a silly piece of popcorn entertainment that too often forgets that this kind of venture needs to be fun .

For fans of needless action films, the reviews aren’t exactly enlightening, but that probably won’t stop us from watching it. Oh well, at least Gosling’s watch is cool.

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‘The Gray Man’ review: Netflix’s most expensive movie ever misses the mark

Netflix's new movie starring ryan gosling and chris evans has stylish action scenes galore, but lacks substance..

By Kevin Slane

“The Gray Man,” Netflix ‘s new action movie starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, represents everything the streaming giant wants to be doing as a company. Facing plateauing subscriber growth and sagging profits, the company has reportedly committed itself to releasing fewer projects, instead choosing to focus on big-budget titles with A-list talent.

As a Hollywood Reporter headline succinctly put it, the company’s strategy is “bigger, fewer, and better.”

“The Gray Man” is certainly bigger: It’s the studio’s most expensive movie ever, and places Evans, Gosling, and fellow star Ana de Armas (“Knives Out”) in a never-ending string of bombastic, effects-heavy action set pieces. In the film’s tone-setting opening sequence, Gosling’s CIA hitman (known only as “Six”) battles a target on a rooftop that is launching thousands of fireworks, preparing viewers for the concussive, eye-popping film to come.

Ultimately, “The Gray Man” is a lot like a Fourth of July fireworks show: It’s fun to watch, and you can appreciate the visual craftsmanship while caught up in the moment. But you’re not watching anything new or innovative, and if someone were to ask you your favorite part 30 minutes after it was over, you’d struggle to articulate a single thing that happened beyond “things went boom.”

“The Gray Man” spends the first 20 minutes whisking viewers from country to country as we learn the backstory of Six (Gosling), a former inmate plucked from his cell by the CIA and given a life sentence as an extrajudicial hitman. His former handler (Billy Bob Thornton) is retired, and Six would love to figure out an exit plan as well. But when he obtains incriminating evidence against a corrupt CIA bureaucrat (Regé-Jean Page, “Bridgeton”), Six goes from hitman to target.

Because the CIA usually uses Six for not-so-legal killings like this one, they instead turn to a loose cannon named Lloyd Hansen (Evans). While Six isn’t bound by laws, Lloyd isn’t constrained by either laws or a moral compass, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his pursuit.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo (“Avengers: Endgame”) have been given a proverbial blank check by Netflix, and they have left it all on the screen. The brothers have always known how to direct stylish, compelling action sequences, from their early days helming the paintball-themed episodes of “Community” to the four Marvel movies they directed last decade.

Thanks to those films, the Russos also know what they have in Evans, who gets the most laughs in “The Gray Man” playing a cartoonishly evil antagonist. Sporting a villainous mustache, Evans smirks his way through the movie, spouting intentionally hackneyed line-readings like “Make him dead.”

Though they spend precious little time onscreen together, Gosling and Evans’ chemistry is undeniable. In the moments when they get to face off, you’ll wish that “The Gray Man” had ditched a half-dozen other characters to give these two more time to pulverize each other with their words and their fists.

The Russos have experience both parodying action procedurals on “Community,” and then directing fun, quippy superhero movies for Marvel. Unfortunately, they can’t quite decide whether the tone of “The Gray Man” is winking or sincere.

Gosling, who in the past has superbly played both a buttoned-up killer in “Drive” and a goofy criminal in “The Nice Guys,” suffers most from the bifurcated approach. One moment, he’s flashing back to his father drowning him in a bathtub or burning him with a car cigarette lighter. Minutes later, he’s engaging in completely straight-faced dialogue with de Armas’ CIA agent that seems like it’s meant to be funny and charming, but didn’t elicit any laughs from the screening I saw.

There’s also a tossed-in subplot involving the teenage daughter of Thornton’s retired CIA honcho that tries to humanize Six that doesn’t really work and isn’t needed. The less said about it, the better.

The Bottom Line

“The Gray Man” is just a perfectly average action film, slotting well below the likes of “Mission: Impossible” and “John Wick” in quality, but providing enough inoffensive entertainment to fill two hours. That said, given Netflix’s expenditures and the star pedigree on screen, audiences deserve — and should expect — more.

Should I watch “The Gray Man”?

Netflix is releasing “The Gray Man” in theaters starting July 15 before it debuts on the streaming platform July 22. Though action movies are always more fun on the big screen, “The Gray Man” isn’t quite good enough to be a theatrical must-see.

Rating: 2 stars (out of 4).

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The Gray Man Review: An Aggressively Mediocre Action Flick

The Russo brothers must be stopped. First, they threw a wrench in a Tom Holland's promising career by delivering his first clunker with the abysmal " Cherry ," and now they've done to Ryan Gosling what he's managed to avoid his entire career: turn him into a generic leading man.

Gosling is one of the finest actors of his generation, and he's managed to become so by mostly avoiding the typical stunt casting that comes with his devastatingly good looks. Star in a Nicholas Sparks romance? Pivot to weird indie mumblecore dramas (and win awards for it). Make rom-com magic with Emma Stone? Turn in some of the most disturbing and disturbingly cool performances of his career. Gosling has consistently kept things fresh — even showing us his incredible comedy chops in 2016's "The Nice Guys" — but after delivering yet another fantastic performance with 2018's "First Man," he disappeared from the screen. So his return to feature films four years later must be worth the wait, right? Sadly, no.

Fifty shades of okay

Gosling stars in "The Gray Man" as Sierra Six, a CIA black ops mercenary who was recruited out of prison with the promise of commuting his sentence. In the 18 years that he's been active, Sierra has made a name for himself as a ruthlessly efficient killer who lives up to his division's nickname as "Gray Men" — agents who operate "in the gray," somewhere between the legal and illegal. They don't exist, and as a result, are expendable.

But when Sierra finds himself the latest to be labeled "expendable," he suddenly finds a lot to live for: for one, the man who recruited him, Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton, phoning it in), whom he sees as a father figure, as well as Fitzroy's spunky niece Claire (Julia Butters, bringing some of that same spark she showed in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), whom Sierra was once tasked with protecting before predictably forming a close bond with the girl. Fitzroy and Claire are naturally the first to be kidnapped by the psychopathic mercenary-for-hire Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans, having a blast in his villain era) after Sierra finds himself in the possession of a valuable piece of information that could unravel a whole government conspiracy reaching right up to the top!! Just kidding, it reaches right up to Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page, surprisingly charmless in the role that was supposed to be his big movie break after "Bridgerton"), your latest ambitious Man in the Suit who is using government resources for all kinds of unethical things (murder).

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo have long been your standard referential filmmakers, but even teaming up with their "Endgame" co-writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely can't elevate "The Gray Man" from pastiche. The plot is your typical Tom Clancy knock-off with a little bit of the silliest Bourne movie thrown in: a Maguffin, a globe-trotting chase, government conspiracies, a third-act rescue. Things get exciting for a little bit when it appears that "The Gray Man" will turn into a low-rent "John Wick," but even the possibility of Gosling getting to fight off a bunch of colorful hitmen goes kaput when it becomes clear all the "elite" assassins sent after Sierra Six are just more generic grunts destined to be shot down while wearing mildly interesting masks.

The saving grace is in the core performers — Gosling might be wasted for all his talents, but he's at least always magnetic to watch even if he seems like he's just on the cusp of having fun. (This will make you nostalgic for when Gosling got to cut loose in "The Nice Guys.") And when he teams up with his "Blade Runner 2049" costar Ana de Armas, that's when the closest thing to movie magic happens — de Armas is given the somewhat thankless role of virtuous CIA agent who becomes Sierra's wary ally after she clues in on the corruption at the top, but boy, is she fun to watch. Even after the excitement over the "Blade Runner 2049" reunion fades, Gosling and de Armas clearly have chemistry in spades, and it's enough to get us over the hump of some truly bizarre structural choices (there are flashbacks galore, some even interrupting the momentum of the movie) and lackluster quips. Evans is a standout too, chewing up his scenes with glee, even though the film makes the strange decision of sticking him behind a monitor to shout things like "Make him dead!" for half of the film. Sadly, Page is an unimpressive villain, while poor Jessica Henwick is given little to do as his second-in-command other than huff and scowl.

What are we, some kind of gray men?

The funny thing is, it does seem like the Russos have learned something from their misfire with "Cherry" — they're no longer taking themselves so seriously. They throw in the occasional visual flair or camera trick to prove that they still can (though it tends to be more irritating than impressive). When they're no longer out to prove themselves as serious filmmakers as they were with their first post-Marvel directorial outing, they can rely on their strengths — though their strengths start to become questionable after the fifth lackluster quip.

"I get it, you're glib," Fitzroy says to Sierra (then named Court Gentry) when he first meets him. But ... Sierra isn't that glib, at least not more than your average action hero (which may be an indictment of the overall action scene, but let's not get into that). Maybe the shine has been lost — whatever clicked that made the Markus and McFeely quips feel so funny in Marvel movies is gone now that it's within a generic action movie.

But what of the action? "The Gray Man" is Netflix's most expensive movie ever, and it shows in some of the fairly impressive set pieces. The car chases are full of tactile, nail-biting stunts, the action scenes explosive, and the Russo brothers are the latest filmmakers to try their hand at replicating the heights of that "Dark Knight" Hong Kong fight scene . But when it comes to the hand-to-hand fights, there's no extra oomph that you see in the best of Hollywood's action flicks — just the typical fast cuts and shaky camera that has been the standard for the past few decades.

"The Gray Man" exists "in the gray" of Hollywood action movies — not jaw-droppingly incredibly, not astoundingly bad, just there . It's a movie that's made to be half-watched on Netflix while scrolling on your phone. Its greatest disappointment is that it knows what it has — Gosling, a great cast, a lot of money — and it still ends up being less than the sum of its parts.

/Film Rating: 5 out of 10