Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans in The Gray Man: Netflix Movie Review

The title of a novel by Mark Green. gray man (the first bestseller in the series) implies a quality as desirable for a spy as it is hard to find in modern films about his exploits: the ability to move through the world unnoticed, so unnoticed that those you interact with notice. As soon as you leave the room.

That spirit is barely seen in the witty, over-the-top Netflix adaptation of Joe and Anthony Russo, whose hero (Ryan Gosling) wields the kind of attention-grabbing riots that shut down entire cities (not to mention he’s handsome enough to run a La John Le Carré never lets him onto the pitch.) A minor character expresses the importance of fusion, but even he wears a million facial hairs and lives in a building designed by artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. that made Gaudí look tame. While the movie itself may be as forgettable as its protagonist apparently wants to be, it’s anything but remarkable.

Gosling plays Court Gentry, who is under arrest for murder when the CIA’s Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) hires him as a covert ops assassin. He is now the last active member of the Sierra Six, Fitzroy’s group. dirty dozenSierra style crew. When we first see it in action, we may be surprised that it has come this far. His mission, one of the most ridiculously designed Hitman shootouts in history, involves using a rifle the size of a jackhammer from the ceiling on a man two floors above him, a target he was about to open just seconds before. When the boy arrives at the scene, Six aborts the mission and kills the boy the old-fashioned way.

But while still breathing, the victim reveals himself to be an ex-Sierra, targeted because he has a flash drive that proves the agency’s chief of staff, Danny Carmichael (bridgertonRegé-Jean Page) is killing people all over the world for his own shady ends. Knowing that Six now has the unit, Carmichael paints him as a fraud and sends all of his spies to kill him.

Enter Chris Evans, the star of the best Russian films ( captain America trilogy) and its most inflated (Avengers: Endgame). Evans is Lloyd Hansen, a psychopath so amoral the CIA fired him that he seems to have so much fun playing the guy; Now he’s a mega freelancer, what Carmichael calls a last resort. Working in a French castle spread across 19,000 acres, he is a carefree loner with an unlimited budget and no scruples.

The Evans/Russian pairing is not the only pairing here. Goose blade runner 2049 She is joined by co-star Ana de Armas as Dani Miranda, an agent whose career is threatened by all of this, who decides to help the six despite her misgivings. The chemistry of the actors in that movie isn’t conveyed here, but Miranda is saved from feeling inadequate at least six times. This part is more prominent than De Armas’ role as an action hero. no time to dieBut Bond’s role had more character.

Speaking of Bond: gray man It certainly wants to compete with him and Ethan Hunt in terms of global action, new locations and wild scenes; This is a very expensive ambition that doesn’t always work. A sequence where the six are trapped in a cargo plane that breaks apart while fighting assassins, for example, doesn’t come close to the thrill of similar action in Roseanne Liang’s Pulpia. a shadow on a cloud; A very long fight in Prague’s old town with an endless supply of assassins who somehow can’t kill our guy seems John Wick Kasoff.

Sometimes a grace note reflects all the explosions and bloodshed around you, like suddenly using your reflex to kill a stealthy assailant. But the screenplay’s witty moments are often predictable, like the noisy telegraph part involving a character’s pacemaker.

This character (Fitzroy’s niece, kidnapped by Hansen) is played by Julia Butters, once upon a time in hollywood. While Tarantino’s movie gave him a more believable starting role, the boy’s presence is valuable, and not just because it makes Six seem noble enough to try and save him. Instead, the scene where he silently defends her is one of the few human-scale violence in the film, in which Gosling (who returns to the big screen after four years first man) can show the calm but deadly stuff that person is made of. (The following melee streak, with the multi-hyphenated Indian Dhanush, is also worthwhile, though it ends highly unlikely.)

Unsurprisingly, the film is at its funniest when Gosling and Evans are involved directly or through intermediaries. It becomes less attractive when we are in command centers watching intelligence officers trying to cover their asses. Alfre Woodard shines in his brief stint on screen as Fitzroy’s former ally. But Paige and Jessica Henwick, who have plenty of screen time (Henwick plays Officer Carmichael), struggle with subtly written characters and meticulously strong plays.

Working with longtime collaborators Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, Joe Russo drastically changed the action of the book; As with the Jack Reacher adaptation starring Tom Cruise, many fans of the author may not recognize what they see here. So it’s smart that while early reports (and showbiz logic) suggested this would be the first of many Gray Man outings, the film’s action did little to support that expectation. Allowing this to be an independent adventure might be artistically reasonable. And despite Netflix’s belt-tightening and revenue-seeking, turning down an insanely expensive sequel might not even harm the artists involved.