The Gray Man (2022)

Considering the huge budget, cast and previous talent of the filmmakers, the fact that The Gray Man is thoroughly average is extremely disappointing. An action thriller that does nothing new and doesn't even play the greatest hits in a particularly memorable fashion.

Ryan Gosling is a fine leading man but sadly isn't able to do anything with his character's surface level depth and very hit and miss humour. Ana De Armas is equally let down by the material, resulting in an equally fine performance not worthy of the talent on screen.

Chris Evans on the other hand, is able to give the strongest performance of the film by a country mile. He's clearly enjoying being able to play against type once again and it results in a bonafide scene stealing, larger than life character.

The Russo Brothers direction is very mixed. The film is competently shot for the most part but hindered by some distracting and misplaced drone shots. The film has a few moments of style but is extremely dull and bland overall.

The action sequences are equally hit and miss. Many are enjoyable on a base level but still too choppy or obscured by random things but a couple have genuine weight and impact. The CG is distractingly cheap which really breaks the larger set pieces.

Fmovies: Netflix finally made a good high budget action movie that strays away from the high budget action comedies with middle of the road action and comedy they have been making like Red Notice and The Man From Toronto. All this movie needed was great action and enjoyable character performances and a serviceable story and it delivers. The action in this movie can range from a little choppy to very slick but it's overall really good. Chris Evans as a villainous maniac is absolutely amazing to watch and Ryan Gosling and Ana De Armas are simply bad asses. Definitely worth seeing in the theater rather than Netflix.

Mediocre. The script and dialogues are really poor, they needed more polishing and talent. Acting is mediocre or weak, everybody's just doing their usual shtick, without much effort. Special effects are weak too, like in a tv series. The fights are choreographed and shot well. All in all, yet another big budget and big stars Netflix adventure that is a forgettable let down, mainly because of a very dumb script.

The Gray Man fmovies. This movie started off okay, some clever dialog, some good action scenes still grounded in reality, (you know, where Newton's laws still apply), and some very creative camera angles. Then, as usually happens, it turned into a Roadrunner/Wilie Coyote cartoon. Humans became superhumans, injuries, no matter how numerous and serious, never slowed our protagonist and one man bested armies. This was so bad...I GUARANTEE a sequel!

Rushing from place to place after opening with a colorful killing in Bangkok adds little to get us into the story.

IMHO relying on Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas proven star qualities fails to substitute a proper establishment of their characters in this movie. Of course as many others I wondered who took all the money Netflix paid for this production but as with so many other big productions today, it's not the point if CGI, actors or travel expenses of the crew were overpriced, the problem lies in the script. The art in script writing is to build up characters and a story. If you don't know why things happen, you don't care and all the surprises and zigzags of the plot loose a lot of their potential.

Another Jason Bourne copycat and a really mediocre one at that. Why is it mediocre? Because of a mediocre silly story and lots of mediocre supporting actors, who usually only star in tv series.

Another Netflix movie which has got that typical cheapish smell of a Netflix tv series production.

No surprises here. No real drama or suspense either. Everything is going through the motions of making yet another mediocre formula action picture.

Not any good then? Some of the action scenes are decent, but some are really laughably stupid, with Ryan Gosling surviving rocketlaunchers and tank attacks. How silly can they make it!

The story: Ryan Gosling does a Jason Bourne copycat. He is a gun for hire and a secret goverment agency is trying to kill him. Will he survive? Duh!