Review of "Grey Man," a Netflix blockbuster starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans
A mediocre spy action film that looks much cheaper than the budget spent.
A special agent code-named Six (Ryan Gosling) discovers that the CIA brass is hiding terrible secrets. Together with a colleague Dani (Ana de Armas) they escape from the U.S. government. Intelligence, however, sends a specialist agent, the psychopathic maniac Lloyd (Chris Evans), on a quest. He is ready to catch Six at any cost and sends one mercenary after another after the hero.
Not all writers are positively affected by success. The Russo brothers are a prime example of filmmakers whose work flourished during a period of relative directorial poverty. They were creative on small budgets with "Community" or "Welcome to Collinwood," a good-looking crime comedy in the vein of the Coen Brothers. The Russo's were great at building a small, colorful, self-contained world. But then Marvel came along, the brothers changed from curious indie authors to competent studio workers and shot some mega-cash "Avengers" for the corporation. And after completing the saga, they went free-wheeling, but only in a very different way. It was as if Russo believed that the success of "Infinity War" and "The Final" is not the account of algorithmic formulas and a huge team of professional craftsmen, but the merit of their skill in working with epic stories.
The era after "The Avengers" began with "Cherry," an ambitious, exorbitantly overblown movie novel that few will remember in a couple of years. "Grey Man" is in some ways the exact opposite of the movie. A personal story that drags on for decades and wanders between genres has been replaced by an adrenaline-fueled action movie whose entire plot can be contained not even in a few words, but in a few interjections and abrupt gestures. Gosling runs, Evans catches up: bam, boom, pee-pee.
Spoiling an elementary formula is hard enough, especially on a budget of a whopping $200 million. Some "John Wick 3" worked just fine on far less: a few creative set pieces, a couple of charismatic secondary characters, and a basic understanding of how action movies work. The action episodes in Grey Man are not badly contrived: Gosling has to run away from mercenaries on a streetcar! Jump out of an airplane without a parachute! Participate in a shootout, being handcuffed to a bench right in the middle of the square! The charisma of "Grey Man" is also supposed to be enough - how else can it be in a picture, where the screen meets Gosling, Evans, Ana de Armas and Billy Bob Thornton?
Curious concepts are hampered by Russo's directorial sluggishness. In each episode they find a way to make the action as boring and clumsy as possible. "Grey Man" is edited as if it were still in the middle of the noughties and the "Bourne" imitation fashion hadn't had time to get to everyone. Where one would like to get a better look at the choreography of the fights, Russo obscures the frame with computer smoke and other annoying effects. But the filmmakers have learned to work with drones. True, the brothers are no Michael Bay and can't hide the awkwardness of "flying" shots behind simple directorial chutzpah.
"The Grey Man looks like it could have been shot for $20 million. There are many locations in different countries, but they all look like extensions of the same street. To shoot the action scenes was blocked off a square in Prague, but the exit episode looks like it was filmed at a pavilion somewhere in Los Angeles. This, however, is a common problem of Netflix blockbusters: some "Red Notice" also does not visually justify the money spent.
In that sense, it's funny to hear the Russo brothers exclaim that the idea that movie theaters are sacred is bullshit. Because "The Gray Man" shows exactly why big auditoriums are necessary. And why movies made specifically for cinema viewing are necessary. Streaming blockbusters don't need to be monumental attractions like "Top Gun: Maverick" or the latest "Mission Impossible." Online settles for drab, "content" is comfortable just being tolerable - visually, scripted, staged. Pity except for Ryan Gosling, who comes as if from another movie and charmingly plays a completely dopey character. But, judging by the way Six often walks around with a toothpick in his mouth, we now know for sure that he is not dead at the end of "Drive.
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