In an ideal world where everything that works on paper functions the same in the real world, getting involved with the MCU for a time should be a good thing. Get studio attention off the back of indie productions, go mainstream and grab collective eyeballs by working within the biggest franchise in Hollywood, and then use that momentum to branch out into passion projects that benefit from being trusted with enough of a budget to make it all work. But again, that’s just the ideal, and since the Russo brothers struck it huge with what was, for a time, the highest-grossing film ever in Avengers: Endgame, they’ve been branching out into their own shit in directing, producing through their AGBO studio, and Joe Russo getting more into scripting. And now, Netflix has handed them a budget even bigger than their last wannabe-blockbuster Red Notice, and like with Red Notice, it’s raring to be the beginning of a franchise for a streaming service that… well, quite frankly, they need that kind of IP security. However, there are a number of glaring issues with what they’ve put together here.
The story and genre framework are old-hat at this point for both the Russos and the writing team of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who squeezed political spy thrills into the MCU aesthetic with the Captain America sequels. It’s about the titular Gray Man, CIA operative Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling), who is double-crossed by his handlers and gets a bounty on his head that has hunted across the world. The main guy gunning for him is Chris Evans as Lloyd Hansen, a ruthless mercenary who ticks pretty much every single Bad Guy cliché on the list and relishes in it.
Except, despite working outside of the restrictions of the teenage-friendly MCU, this still feels remarkably muted in its attempts at, ahem, ‘gray’ tones. Sierra Six is touted as being an action lead on par with John Wick, talked of in hushed tones about how untouchable he is, but Ryan Gosling just isn’t that kind of action lead. He can do mysterious and morally ambiguous, like he did with his star-making turn in Drive, but as the hardened badass, he lacks the charisma to pull it off. To say nothing of Lloyd Hansen, who keeps talking a big game about being an unrepentant sadist, but comes across more like a 4chan regular’s idea of what that actually looks like. Any scenes involving him torturing someone else try to give Casino Royale, but feel more like Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.
Then there’s the action cred here, which is… passable, I guess? The stunt team here, collectively, have done a lot of work for the Russos as well as the EightySeven boys, and it certainly tries to capture that same kind of action-as-art aesthetic. The film also tries to ape the globe-trotting bombast of the Fast & Furious franchise, right down to getting that series’ go-to DP Stephen F. Windon, along with set pieces that aim for Mission: Impossible’s brand of balls-to-the-wall conviction. But spread across all of those different influences, it only manages to convey a watered-down slurry of their respective parts, making a story that spans several European countries feel as panoramic as an office building.
To put it simply, this film mistakes having an A-list cast for personality, and expensive production values for size and scale. Chris Evans, try-hard as his character is, is at least fun in his ridiculousness, and Ana de Armas gives hope that her upcoming lead role in the John Wick spin-off Ballerina will give her a chance to shine in this genre, but everything else is just so middle-of-the-road as to be superfluous, even by popcorn action flick standards. Maybe the Russos should stick to producing; that seems to be working much better for them.
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