The Gray Man Review – It’s Another Mediocre Netflix Movie
Netflix’s most expensive movie is muddled impression of much better spy movies.
Most of the blockbusters that came out of Netflix over the last few years have not done very well. One would not consider them to be the best examples of entertainment media. Unluckily, The Gray Man seems to continue the tradition. Instead of a proper movie, the film is simply an approximation of what could have been something great.
The Gray Man
While it features some of the most prominent movie stars ever including Chris Evans, Ryan Gosling, and Ana de Armas along with some top character actors including Alfre Woodard and Billy Bob Thornton, The Gray Man still fails to capture the audience’s interest.
Don’t get me wrong here. The actors have done a tremendous job. However, they could not have done much considering ow thinly their characters were written. Furthermore, it is certain that the directors are trying hard to make the movie look like an action thriller with a budget of $200 million.
All the instruments of the film are set in place. However, the instruments never really play the right music, and it feels like all the notes are flat. The stunt work in the film is great and the production values seem to be high. However, despite that, The Gray Man fails to portray originality.
The movie starts off in a promising way though. It starts off with the main character played by Ryan getting into a brawl with one of his targets. However, things get complicated when the mark places a target on Ryan’s back. Things get mildly interesting when the higher-ups enlist Evans’ character to get rid of Ryan at any cost.
However, the movie quickly takes a route where it seems like it is full of internal confusion and misdirection, as it strays away from the simple plot it was set to follow. Based on a novel by Mark Greany, The Gray Man puts together two big movie stars against each other. One is the bad assassin while other is the good assassin.
The scale of the movie is quite impressive, and the stunts are practical as well. However, the staging and editing could have been better. One of the major set pieces in the film involves a prolonged escape and assault with a huge amount of collateral damage. It would even put The Winter Soldier’s city street showdown to shame.
Just like the film Extraction by Netflix, the action sequences are not very compelling and coherent with each other. The action is not bad at all. It is just way too generic to a point where one may not even remember the scenes at all.
Whatever Ryan Gosling says or does in The Gray Man seems to have less entertainment value. Instead, he is positioned as a generic figure. On the other hand, Evan really takes some of the spotlight. However, most of the one-liner dialogues from his side are reminiscent of long-forgotten memes.
On the other hand, Ana de Armas plays the role of a reluctant tag along girl of Ryan. However, all three actors, despite being top movie stars, simply remind us of the better roles that they have played in the past. It looks like the film desperately attempted to capture the Hollywood action glory days but all it did was revive some of the past cliches.
Maybe its due to the budget constraints, The Gray Man does not really go beyond recapturing nostalgia by similar action movies that were big before the MCU. In that sense, The Gray Man could be yet another meme movie by Netflix, just like Red Notice, earlier.
But it looks like consumers are not ready to trade lower-quality entertainment with the convenience of streaming new movies at home. However, Netflix really needs to take good quality into consideration. After all, it is not the fault of Disney that most people have started treating the MCU movies as a showstopper against all other action and thriller movies of Hollywood.
There was a time when movies like The Gray Man really flourished. However, what we get now are lists of movies that have all the star glamor but no entertainment value. Though, it is expected that eventually after considering all such failures, Netflix will stop making such unrealistic bets.
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