The Gray Man

Ryan Gosling (Court Gentry). At the center of The Gray Man is Ryan Gosling's Count Gentry, aka Sierra Six, a CIA black ops operative who becomes the target of ...

Woodard previously worked with the Russos on Captain America: Civil War (she played the grieving mother who approached Tony Stark at MIT), but that was just a small part of her career. The list of Thornton’s best movies features one extraordinary performance after another in films like Sling Blade, Monster’s Ball, Primary Colors, Tombstone and more. And then there is also all that buzz around if he will or will not be the next man to call himself “Bond, James Bond.” With names like Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas front and center of the spy thriller book-to-film adaptation, it’s safe to say The Gray Man cast is one remarkable bunch of actors. Despite being best known for playing the fan-favorite hero Captain America throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Evans has proven on more than one occasion that he is well suited to play the bad guy. Anthony and Joe Russo know a thing or two about working with large ensemble casts made of up talented actors — just look at their work on four of the best Marvel movies and it becomes all the more clear.

After a limited theatrical debut, Netflix's newest attempt at building a blockbuster franchise, The Gray Man, has arrived and so far, it's going somewhat ...

There’s too much talent on board for browsing audiences to flick past it, and if it’s entertaining enough for fans, well, it doesn’t really matter what critics think. It became Netflix’s most-viewed original movie by a good margin, and is getting at least one sequel as a result. If a movie is popular and enjoyed by fans, that’s enough to consider it a success. Captain America: The Winder Soldier and both Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame have 85%+ scores, and similarly high marks from audiences. I expect this to rocket up the Netflix charts over the weekend here, and I would be surprised if this did not end up becoming one of their most viewed movies by the end of its initial run here. To be clear, critics have normally liked the Russo’s work in the Marvel universe.

Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans face off in this globetrotting spy movie from the directors of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame.

Kudos to the filmmakers, by the way, for those florid Evil Dead-like establishing shots shot from a drone, which capture large swaths of the city and shake things up from the usual. Promoted as Netflix’s most expensive movie to date, The Gray Man is undeniably polished and entirely engrossing, though like most of the streaming service’s offerings, it feels more like disposable entertainment than event cinema. (See previous articles for more details on The Gray Man’s shooting locations in Prague). This slam-bang sequence, largely accomplished using practical effects outside of shots of Prague architecture being smashed up to pieces, is beautifully choreographed and executed, and easily the film’s biggest highlight. Twenty years after he’s recruited, Six finds himself in Bangkok and assigned to take out a target by slick new CIA honcho Denny Carmichael ( Regé-Jean Page) before said target can sell off valuable government data. Still, one might wish this real-life spy movie took things more seriously than a comic book blockbuster; The Gray Man’s destructive action sequences seem to unfold without much consequence, while its characters never miss an opportunity to make a lighthearted quip.

Much like Brad Pitt before him, Ryan Gosling keeps falling into Hollywood's “cool guy” trap.

He’s pulled off the taciturn heroes of Drive, Blade Runner 2049, and First Man, but also the shambling, overconfident private detective Holland March in The Nice Guys, the scumbag trader Jared Vennett in The Big Short, and the kind-hearted but awkward Lars of Lars and the Real Girl. He was at his least interesting as a do-gooder cop in Gangster Squad, and that’s what The Gray Man recalled for me above all. Given that the government honed him as a “gray man” who could blend into the background of any assignment, he spends the majority of the movie glowering and mumbling when he’s not being tossed into another CGI-powered combo of running, jumping, and shooting. In return, he delivers the all-purpose steely charm required of him, but there’s no passion behind it. The actor he’s frequently reminded me of is Brad Pitt, who catapulted to fame in the early ’90s with striking work in Thelma and Louise, bolstered by his chiseled face. One of his best-remembered films remains the taut 2011 thriller Drive, in which he played an unnamed stunt driver who is cool behind the wheel but monosyllabic in conversation. In First Man, he portrayed the astronaut Neil Armstrong as prickly and standoffish, far more ready to face his work than any interpersonal relationship.

Just putting this out there: Joe and Anthony Russo are not filmmakers. The brothers — best known for helming Avengers: Endgame — have just released their ...

“So, this idea that was created — that we hang on to — that the theater is a sacred space, is bullshit. The Gray Man is unlikely to be turned into a video game, and you’re probably not going to see many Sierra Six lunchboxes or action figures. So let’s dispense with the idea, for the sake of this review, that The Gray Man is any kind of work of art. Several minutes of it will surely be watched by something like 100 million people around the world, and this will be called a blockbuster, and we’ll be asked to take Netflix at their word even as their subscription numbers stagnate and their employees are made redundant and they shrink their global production slate. well, I’m not a business guy (you can tell by the fact that I chose freelance writing for a career), but I’d probably start thinking about selling my stocks. And so, Sierra Six — or just Six as everyone calls him — goes on the run from another assassin played by Chris Evans (main attributes: sarcastic quips, being hot, having a mustache) and his army of yet more assassins, all while teaming up with a female assassin played by Ana de Armas (main attributes: being slightly annoyed with the quips, and being a hot lady) and trying to rescue Billy Bob Thornton (hot, no notes) and his precocious young daughter. Along the way, there are huge, absurd fight scenes obscured by pink smoke, gray smoke, white smoke, and other kinds of smoke, all set in expensive locales and on crashing jets and derailing streetcars. Anthony Russo says of The Gray Man in the THR interview, “This is big cinema. “We make movies like The Gray Man so that we can help the Daniels make Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Joe explains. “You can use business-focused content to support more personal projects.” You see, The Gray Man is business-focused content. The duo recently shared some of their motivating principles in a mind-numbing interview with The Hollywood Reporter, posing in expensive casual wear around their downtown Los Angeles offices, which they have funded by making “movies that 10-year-olds are weeping over and begging to go see.” They discuss learning from their early mentor Steven Soderbergh about his old (and not exactly successful) “one for you, one for them” philosophy of filmmaking, which they seem to have interpreted as something more like paying it forward. Asked about their involvement in that film, Joe Russo says in the most tech-brain possible terms, “We were the seed capital,” describing the Daniels’ film as “highly experimental” and having “a level of absurdism married to emotion that I hadn’t seen in a while.” Which is why they thought, “if we could help them calibrate it for a slightly wider audience, there could be something really explosive there.” To be fair, that’s just their role as producers, literally the business side.

The thriller stars Ryan Gosling as an ex-CIA agent being hunted by a former colleague (Chris Evans). Netflix starts at $10/month and goes up to $20/month for ...

If you buy them, we may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our partners. You can watch "The Gray Man" on Netflix in up to 4K quality with Dolby Vision contrast and Dolby Atmos audio. The Standard plan costs $15.49 a month and offer high definition streaming on two screens at once. It costs $20 a month and includes streaming on up to four screens in up to 4K UHD quality. Netflix's Basic plan costs $10 a month and lets you stream in standard definition on one screen at a time. As of writing, the film has a 50% score on review-aggregator Rotten Tomatoes based on 165 reviews from critics.

Netflix's 'The Gray Man' seems poised for sequels and prequels, starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Here's what we know about 'The Gray Man 2.'

It’s the talking point of most media buzz, and it’s the first thing we should get out of the way: at somewhere around $200 million, The Gray Man (starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans) is now Netflix’s most expensive original movie. Scott Stuber, Netflix’s head of global film told The New York Times he’s been hoping to help the company break into big franchise action films since he arrived five years ago. That’s not including a vague CIA chief known as “the old man.” And there are precedents; big movies have paid off in the past. It’s too soon to tell whether this strategy will pay off, but it does suggest a forward-looking film cycle, where Netflix hopes to run several action franchises simultaneously. The budget matters.

Action, action and more action in new Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans Netflix movie "The Gray Man"

There should be some real electricity seeing Gosling and Evans duke it out in a water fountain, but it is oddly underwhelming — especially after some of the film's superb actions sequences. (And for those counting, Gosling also gets one shirtless scene where displays his impressive chest; it is the same number of times he is called a "Ken doll." But as exhilarating — or as exhausting — as "The Gray Man" is, the film strains credibility as Six survives everything he encounters. As Carmichael, Regé-Jean Page is as petty as he is pretty. It is a big, noisy, explosive adrenaline rush — a live-action spin on that old "MAD" magazine comic, "Spy vs. But mostly, the film is one action set piece after another after another.

Pitting Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) and Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) against each other in front of an ornate French fountain was quite the choice for the film's ...

It all leads to the mess that The Gray Man sees its characters at the heart of, as the ambitious Denny Carmichael gets both Fitzroy and Cahill out of CIA leadership. Speaking of which, there are plenty of consequences to go around in this universe, but all of that naturally depends on how well this first Sierra Six adventure does with the crowd. If you’re hungry for more knowledge, our last offering is this rundown of what we knew about The Gray Man, prior to actually seeing the film. Joe Russo: It seemed, yeah…we struggled over that for a long, long time…Seemed too, it just, again, like, we, we used to always say this with the Marvel work, you know, there has to be stakes, you know what I'm saying? You’ll notice that we’ve barely mentioned Chris Evans’ Lloyd Hansen, the Gray Man villain critics can’t stop talking about, in our examination of this ending. As both know what really happened throughout this entire CIA shit show, they’re pretty much public enemies #1 and #2. Or at least, that would be the official viewpoint of the two parties that have the most to lose from this mess. One could say it’s a small price to pay for backing Suzanne’s story that Lloyd Hansen was behind every single screwup we saw in The Gray Man. However, it’s a price that’s soon voided out. However, there are two conditions: Court goes back to prison, and the niece of his late mentor, Donald (Billy Bob Thornton), is placed under CIA lock and key. Should you want to know more about the movie without spoilers, read our official review of The Gray Man. Otherwise, let the madness begin, starting with what happened at the end of Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans’ insane confrontation. Pitting Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) and Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) against each other in front of an ornate French fountain was quite the choice for the film’s final fight. If you haven’t watched the movie yet and want to go in cold, this is the point of no return. Simultaneously, the tracks to the future are laid pretty effectively, as Ryan Gosling protagonist Court Gentry has been mixing it up with his enemies for 11 books, with a 12th on the way.

How does Netflix's 'The Gray Man' stack up against Mark Greaney's novel? We've got everything you need to know about 'The Gray Man' book ending here.

Court doesn’t have much time to rest, as Marc Laurent — the Monsieur Laurent of LaurentGroup — arrives at the château in his helicopter. By the time Court arrives in Normandy, Phillip has been shot dead by a sniper while trying to prevent Claire from escaping the compound to alert the police, and the Gray Man has amassed enough wounds to need a medicinal cocktail of blood, dextrose, narcotics, and amphetamines to make it the last few miles to the château. After Court refuses Fitzroy’s offer to set up another extraction, the handler reveals that the “Nigerians” — in actuality, mercenaries hired by LaurentGroup — are holding Phillip and his family in Normandy and will kill them if Court isn’t dead within the next 48 hours. Greaney’s 2009 novel follows Courtland “Court” Gentry — aka the Gray Man, a former CIA operative who now works as a hired killer, trying to stay one step ahead of his former allies, who have orders to shoot him on sight. He’s arranged for Fitzroy’s son, Phillip, to be kidnapped — along with Phillip’s wife, Elise, and their 8-year-old twin daughters, Claire (Julia Butters) and Kate — and held at Château Laurent in Normandy. The family is as good as dead, unless Fitzroy complies. The primary antagonist refers to Nigerians as “savages” twice, and his statement goes unchallenged, both by the other characters and by the text as a whole.

Netflix's next big new July move is “The Gray Man,” a CIA thriller film starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans. Sadly, it's not good.

Meanwhile, “The Gray Man” seems destined to the same fate. Even “Bridgerton” and “Squid Game” may prove to be fluke hits. (Disney+ and HBO Max are the main players here, but even Peacock and Paramount+ immediately conjure images of NBC comedies and “Star Trek” respectively.) But after coming face-to-face with large-scale streamers that bring a defined brand to the table, Netflix's lack of a defined lane has become a detriment. This means in a way it is also the perfect Netflix film: something that looks like other things you like to watch, without actually demanding you watch it. Leading man Gosling has never had much of a defined personality, but here he fades into the background of his own movie.