The Gray Man

Review: Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans play empty spy games in Netflix's 'The Gray Man'. A bearded man with a cut on his forehead stands in a ...

He’s always been good at inhabiting emotional and psychological nonentities, whether as a replicant in “Blade Runner 2049” or as a man scarcely more lifelike than his blow-up doll in “Lars and the Real Girl.” (At one point in “The Gray Man” he’s referred to as a “Ken doll,” an undisguised reference to his role in the upcoming “Barbie” movie.) Sometimes Gosling can make that restraint work for a character, like his emotionally tamped-down Neil Armstrong in “First Man” (2018), which happens to be the last movie he appeared in before this one. A computer drive full of highly incriminating data goes missing, historic European landmarks are treated like cannon fodder, and people snarl things like “If you like breathing, you might want to fix this.” Page and Henwick are particularly wasted in some of the most tedious Langley office drama in recent memory. The latest of those jobs finds Six in Bangkok, where he teams up with another operative, Dani (Ana de Armas, basically extending her “No Time to Die” cameo), to take out a high-priority target. I have no idea whether that particular torture scene comes from the source material, not having read “The Gray Man” or any other novels in the series by Mark Greaney, a protégé of the late Tom Clancy. I also don’t know whose idea it was to throw a screaming teenager with a heart condition repeatedly into harm’s way — a choice that might have felt more defensible in a movie that didn’t expect us to chortle merrily at every fresh burst of mayhem. “The Gray Man” was directed by brothers Joe and Anthony Russo, though it’s such a synthetic, soulless bundle of goods that it barely feels touched by human hands. He gives us another one of those ciphers in the new Netflix espionage thriller “The Gray Man,” which is the first movie to make me consider watching “Only God Forgives” again, perhaps to offer or even seek my own forgiveness.

The Russo brothers evoke Bond and Bourne with the familiar story of a US government assassin forced to go it alone.

Netflix's The Gray Man borrows from a slew of secret-agent thrillers, but doesn't match them in quality, writes Nicholas Barber.

The result is a film that never seems to know what it's doing, or why. The characters always have smarmy comebacks at the ready (although they're witty without being funny), the ever-cool Gosling raises a smile by treating the violence as a mildly irritating inconvenience, and Evans is entertainingly horrible as a sadistic sociopath. This, then, could be the ideal moment for a new cinematic secret agent – and The Gray Man seems to be the man for the job. The one-dimensionally evil Carmichael calls in a one-dimensionally crazy contractor called Lloyd (Chris Evans with a moustache) to retrieve the doohickey and to bump off Six, and Lloyd in turn calls in every team of assassins in his little black book. It's fair to say that Greaney's idea of Six being a mysterious figure who can slip into the shadows, unnoticed by anyone, has been abandoned in favour of absurdly over-the-top mayhem, so if you enjoy seeing planes, cars and buildings being blown up in a fake-looking way, then The Gray Man will pass the time. The truly hackneyed part is that Six is on the run from the very people who trained him.

'The Gray Man,' starring Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, is another big-budget Netflix movie that feels like it's just playacting as a Hollywood ...

Granted, the swift disappearance of specific genres (like the rom-com) has left critics and pundits (mea culpa) willing to relish a new offering (like Marry Me) precisely because it feels flash-frozen from another era. However, as shown from Extraction (which positioned Hemsworth as the secondary lead in the action climax) and 21 Bridges (which had a Sydney Lumet-worthy distrust of cops and awareness of systemic corruption), you can make a throwback that doesn’t feel like a relic. While the stunts look practical and the scale is impressive, the editing and staging render much of the showdowns painfully chaotic. 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. The film spins itself silly to make it feel expansive while burying its simple plot (the good guy must save his mentor and the mentor’s niece and kill the bad guy) under a deluge of misdirection and internal confusion. While we don’t have much reason to root for Court Gentry (Gosling) beyond the “he avoids collateral damage” variable, the curtain-raiser offers travelogue locales and plenty of colorful momentum as our hero improvises but gets into a brawl with his target.

Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans star in an action extravaganza — the most expensive Netflix movie to date — that feels made to be watched in the background ...

The Gray Man wraps up the way a TV pilot would, with shockingly little resolution and most of the characters returned to their starting positions to do this all over again in the inevitable sequel. The Russos may have been responsible for one of the better fight scenes in the MCU, in the elevator in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but here, they stage prolonged action sequences on a crashing plane and a moving tram that are boosted with sloppy computer-generated work and so little sense of where the characters are in relation to the spaces they’re in that there’s no tension at all. The movie spends a lot of time in a tonal purgatory where it’s never clear if it’s meant to be funny, and while its banter isn’t generally good enough for that to matter, it does end up undercutting the best gag, which is that Lloyd and Carmichael met not doing untoward fieldwork in the Balkans or something but at Harvard. He has a Bourne-like capacity for brutality and for weathering serious injuries, and the movie has a tendency to throw him into situations where he has to fight hand-to-hand, which admittedly end up looking better than the shootout sequences. But he has one of those, too: Sierra Six, which is a reference to the CIA program he’s recruited into at the start of the movie as well as a not-so-subtle nod to a certain globe-trotting spy. Adapted from the first of a series of books by Mark Greaney, it’s meant to launch a franchise, and it’s directed by Marvel veterans the Russo brothers.

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, ...

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. The film is based on Mark Greaney's Gray Man and Court Gentry books. Speaking of style, The Gray Man makes it crystal clear that the Russos’ copy-paste visual approach is unworkable. 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. 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. The majority of the cast is similarly shackled by the edit’s need to zip from scene to scene without a lasting human moment.

Critics are split on the Netflix spy thriller, which looks and feels expensive and benefits from the charms of its big-name leads, but feels like a bit less ...

–Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network –Chris Bumbray, JoBlo’s Movie Network –Molly Freeman, Screen Rant There is some unfinished business to attend to once the credits roll, which will most likely lead to a sequel. –Edward Douglas, The Weekend Warrior It was especially fun to see it in a packed theater, where the crowd clearly ate it up… This is a waste of the white-hot star of the moment. –Edward Douglas, The Weekend Warrior She seems born to lead action movies and might be the next big female action star. –Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has a Lesson –Don Shanahan, Every Movie Has a Lesson Gosling’s never done a major action movie on this level…

The action-packed thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans is clever, stylish and fun to watch. But it's still missing something essential.

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It's not enough to see Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling do battle in just one Netflix movie, so here's all the info on The Gray Man 2 release date.

That’s all we know about The Gray Man 2 release date for now, but we’re sure more details will crawl out of the woodwork as the dust settles on this first chapter in Court Gentry’s journey. So, when can we expect The Gray Man 2 release date to be? What will be The Gray Man 2 release date?

The latest from directors Anthony and Joe Russo borrows giddily from the globetrotting adventures of Jason Bourne, James Bond and Ethan Hunt, casting Ryan ...

The Gray Man never stops trying to achieve a blase hipness, which is meant to counter the supersized spectacle and the presumably gargantuan budget, but the snotty sarcasm isn’t sharp enough, only underlining the picture’s programmatic nature. We quickly meet Six (Gosling), a Bourne-like assassin who’s about to execute his latest government-sanctioned kill in Bangkok, assisted by a CIA agent he’s never met before, Dani (de Armas) – but he quickly learns that his target is connected to the same top-secret US program as he is. Releasing in US and UK theatres on Friday July 15 before arriving on Netflix globally a week later, The Gray Man is the sort of derivative, high-profile event picture that has become the streamer’s signature.

Following the screening of Dhanush's much-anticipated Hollywood film 'The Gray Man' at Los Angeles, fans have taken to social media to discuss his character ...

Dhanush, who speaks about the experience of shooting for the film in this video too, mentions that The Gray Man is a roller coaster ride. The intention is if audiences like this film, we expand out the storytelling from here, and this is a fascinating character to move forward in that world." Dhanush has a great presence on camera and the character is almost mystical in a way. Dhanush, who attended the premiere of The Gray Man along with his sons Yatra and Linga, also took to social media to share photos where they are seen in black suits and posing for the cameras. Following a recent screening of the film at Los Angeles, it was revealed that Chris Evans refers to Dhanush as ‘My dear Tamil friend’ in one of the scenes from the movie, exciting fans of the Kollywood actor Speaking about Dhanush’s character at a Twitter Spaces session ahead of the trailer launch, filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo had said, "Anthony and I are big Dhanush fans.

The Russo Brothers' latest attempt to build an action franchise is a flashy display that can't outrun it's lack of imagination.

The Gray Man is a competently crafted action film by professionals who may as well be operating on autopilot. The term "gray man" refers to one who can seamlessly blend into a crowd, undetectable to the uninformed observer. The Russo's aren't reinventing the wheel and most of the film's setpieces would feel right at home in The Winter Soldier, but it's well put together. Some are extremely effective, others look like cheap ways to hide occasionally dodgy CGI. This film cost $200 million to make, reportedly one of the highest budgets in Netflix's history, and the cash isn't always on-screen. Gosling isn't exactly being asked to portray the depths of human drama here, but he handles his glib quippy dialogue and mild inconvenience in the face of violence well. The Gray Man isn't an embarrassing disaster like Bright, it's a technically proficient waste of time, like Red Notice.

Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas face off in an explosive and expensive thriller in theaters now and on Netflix soon.

In the wake of public shootings in the US, Denmark and Norway (and that's just this year) this callous ultraviolence hits different. The quippy banter and sharp action are heightened and stylized, and just a ton of fun. But then there's a huge showdown in the streets of a European city. Maybe I'm squinting too hard to suggest this is Netflix's smartest action film, but it's definitely one of the most fun. 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. 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. Rooftop helipads and secure lines and guys making the bullets fall out of a gun before the other guy can shoot him. 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. Clearly directors Joe and Anthony Russo are very self-aware about the type of flick they're making. After 60 years of James Bond on screen, after six (and counting) Mission: Impossible movies, a spy movie hinges on a frickin' thumb drive! "We get it, you're glib," Thornton responds, but as Gosling contemplates a life of murder for the government his eyes soften mournfully. In some theaters now and then streaming on Netflix July 22, The Gray Man opens with Gosling in prison two decades ago, wisecracking at Billy Bob Thornton's unflappable CIA spook.

This week's new entertainment releases include Beyoncé's new album “Renaissance,” Stephen Curry hosting the ESPYS sports awards and the summer thrill ride ...

Among the highlights: “Island of Walking Sharks,” on Wednesday, with a scientist’s investigation of shark evolution. Made in connection with the 2019 ZZ Top Netflix documentary, “That Little Ol’ Band From Texas,” the 11-track album was produced by Gibbons, and is dedicated “in righteous memory of Dusty Hill.” Another song on the new set is titled “Queen of the Bees” and has the silly lyric “I want to hold you like a sloth hugs a tree.” He told EW: ”I was challenging myself to sort of see what I could get away with!” ”I knew the sounds I was hearing in my head were so unorthodox that I had to do most of it myself,” he says. — The summer thrill ride known as Shark Week is back on Discovery Channel for its 34th year, with stars including tiger sharks with a taste for pork and “monster” hammerheads. — Before Billy Porter was a Broadway star and red-carpet doyen, he was a kid in Pittsburgh. In “Anything's Possible, ” Porter returns to his hometown to make his directorial debut, a trans coming-of-age comedy.

Netflix's The Gray Man is stacked with talent. Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame's Anthony and Joe Russo directed the film, which stars Ryan ...

The appeal of a film like The Gray Man lies in how more than what, as the cast and crew work in concert to execute exciting action sequences. But they catapulted to their current success by depicting casual catastrophe, which is less charming without a familiar stable of superheroes to bolster their work with fan affection. They’re both action stars in their own right, and while de Armas gets a couple of good fights, Henwick’s character feels like an afterthought in a film that should have engaged with both of them more. And the stakes keep rising to the point where the characters become superhuman by default, as they survive exploding cargo planes and derailed high-speed trolleys with little more than a bandage and a quip to walk it off. Similarly underutilized are Jessica Henwick (the secret best part of Netflix and Marvel’s maligned Iron Fist series) and Knives Out’s Ana de Armas. The latter is an operative who worked alongside Six and decides to help figure out why the CIA wants him dead. Flash forward to the present, and Gentry faces a delicious question that drives the plot into motion: How does a man with his job retire?

Joe and Anthony Russo's new movie tries to be an over-the-top Mission: Impossible adventure but ends up in a no-man's land of inconsequence.

There’s plenty of generic gunplay and anonymous but fiery explosions, as well as a sequence in which a character’s fingernails are pulled out (off-camera, but still) with pliers and dropped onto a plate in all their miniature, bloody glory. Because he’ll stop at nothing, Lloyd kidnaps the person Fitzroy loves most in the world, his niece, Claire (played by Julia Butters, the marvelous young actress who sparred with Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood). Claire happens to have a heart condition, as well as an attendant pacemaker, which will figure prominently and conveniently in the plot. He also sports a cartoonish sprout of facial hair which Six at one point refers to as a “trash ‘stache.” In The Gray Man, the quips just keep on coming. When the characters played by Gosling and Evans—the first a dubious hero, the other an obvious villain—encounter each other for the first time, Gosling says, “I immediately don’t like you,” to which Evans responds, “Looks like we’re on the same page.” With repartee like that, who needs movie stars? Gosling plays a skilled operative known only as Six, the last remaining member of Sierra, a group of black-ops assassins put together by understated CIA smarty Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton). Early on, we see Six prowling through a riotous party in Bangkok, dressed in a slinky red suit. Maybe that’s how Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans, two of Hollywood’s most appealing actors, can end up in a showy but hollow movie like The Gray Man, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and adapted from Mark Greaney’s novel, a picture that tries desperately to be an over-the-top Mission: Impossible adventure only to end up in a no-man’s land of inconsequence.

Netflix Changes Tack With Marketing Spree for $200 Million Film · Streaming service bought TV ads to tout Ryan Gosling movie · The spy thriller is one of the ...

"The Gray Man's" biggest muscle flex doesn't come from Ryan Gosling or Chris Evans (not that they're slackers), but rather the overall casting, throwing in ...

Ultimately, "The Gray Man" is an unintentionally appropriate title to describe a movie that exists within such a narrow band of the cinematic spectrum. Gosling's Court Gentry gets plucked out of prison, naturally, to kill for the CIA, operating in a gray realm that, to quote the old song, gives him a number and takes away his name. school of loud if not-all-that-colorful Netflix action movies, where casting, social-media clout and superhero cred in the key cast makes the quality basically irrelevant.

Deadline has an exclusive track from the score for Netflix's tentpole 'The Gray Man' composed by Henry Jackman.

Jackman likened the process of developing it to growing his own tree for ingredients to cook with: nourishing it and watering it, trimming and cultivating its branches, and really taking the time to create something amazing and organic. In the end, of course, the Russos loved it, and Jackman used the suite as the basis for the rest of the film’s score. He penned his suite for the film over the course of 11 months—a length of time in which he could have completed five films—growing obsessed with the piece at a point when he was only supposed to be banging out some ideas for the score.

He changes outfits, but never the TAG in our watch-related movie of the week. · We Talk To Ryan Gosling, Who Plays A TAG Heuer Carrera-Wearing Assassin In ...

In the second scene of the film, we see Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling) dressed in a red suit at a New Years Eve party in Thailand. We watch as he lifts a napkin to his lips after some charming back and forth with fellow spy, Dani Miranda (played by Ana de Armas). It's at this moment that we see the TAG for the first time. Not long after, he sneaks into a secret room for an assignment and the watch is visible as he removes his jacket and assembles his weaponry. And it wasn't the first choice of watch for the film either – hence the two day scramble to get it to him. The TAG Heuer partnership was Golsing's first ambassadorship of any kind, so to see him announced alongside this watch, and then for him gravitate to it so much that he personally requested it be on his wrist in this movie is cool to see. The camera then frames the Carrera in what I like to call, the hero shot. Gosling went on to say how he felt it was important for the watch to remain a constant for his character, despite other variables in his life changing. And I think that makes it a good fit for Gosling, who has been known to wear 34mm vintage pieces in the past. It was at that time that he suggested his character wear a specific TAG in this film … and the brand had to get it to him in two days. Sure enough they did, and the watch he wears is the one that debuted with his ambassadorship. You might remember that we were also in LA when it was announced that he would be a brand ambassador for TAG Heuer. Well, it also turns out that this film was set to begin shooting shortly after he became one. "With this film, it really felt like there was a real opportunity, because watches are such a part of spy movies," Gosling told HODINKEE's Nora Taylor the day before the film's premier. The movie is a showcase for the Russo's deftness for action sequences, but is equally a platform for Ryan Gosling to wear a watch from the brand he very recently teamed up with.

Gosling plays an assassin being chased by other assassins. That sounds exciting, but it isn't; it's a pileup of self-admiring one-liners and insanely ...

Jackson started writing it when he was working as an usher at the Broadway show "The Lion King" - hope you can join us. Probably the most exciting supporting player here is the popular Indian actor and musician Dhanush, who gets to unleash some deadly moves as one of Lloyd's henchmen. This isn't the first time he's played a handsome cipher who happens to be very skilled at killing people, as he did in arty thrillers like "Drive" and "Only God Forgives," and he makes Six enough of an intriguingly unknown quantity to keep you watching. Rege-Jean Page of "Bridgerton" fame and Jessica Henwick from "The Matrix: Resurrections" are wasted in some tedious corporate CIA drama. CHANG: Just to make clear what happens at the end of that scene, instead of giving up the drive, Six drops a live grenade, forcing him and Lloyd to run and send themselves crashing through windows completely unharmed before it explodes. But a lot of the other actors don't fare as well. "The Gray Man" was directed by the brothers Joe and Anthony Russo, known for their work on Marvel blockbusters like "Avengers: Endgame." They're comedy directors by temperament. In this action scene, Six and Lloyd finally meet face to face. One day, Six is given a seemingly routine assignment in Bangkok. But the mission goes horribly wrong, and he himself becomes the CIA's next target. He has several new projects on the horizon, the most attention-grabbing of which will surely be the live-action "Barbie" movie, in which he plays a real-life Ken doll. Cut to several years later, and Gosling's character, now known as Sierra Six, is very, very good at that work. He's visited by Donald Fitzroy, a grizzled CIA veteran played by a fine Billy Bob Thornton, speaking of actors we don't see enough in movies anymore.