The Gray Man

Certainly not a bad movie, and the action is actually quite enjoyable.. or the movie is at least a lot more enjoyable than the attempts at movies that Netflix has done recently.

It is however a bit of a basic "Jason Bourne" meets "John wick" meets "James Bond" type story - filled with cliche's and the dialogue and acting are a bit bland, and honestly, with the well known names in this movie, it probably should have been a bit better.

It was nice seeing Gosling in this roll - But he probably pulled of the "I don't really care anymore" attitude a bit too much, meaning there isn't any excitement.

Evans was enjoyable. Or at least nice to see a different part of him after seeing him for 10+ years in the Marvel universe.

However, I'm worried that they might be trying to set up a franchise here, which might not be a good thing. James Bond can do that, Jason Bourne did it, John wick certainly did it. But there isn't enough in this movie to set up the franchise.. here it's a "meh" film where the "meh" attempted to hide in a whole heap of action scenes.. granted. Some of those action scenes are pretty good. But it's still surrounded by "meh"

I think I've come to terms that outside Marvel the Russo brothers are average directors.

We are treated to an above average action thriller with questionable cinematography. Gosling and Evans were good in their roles which was nice to see. Pacing was decent.

The plot and action sequences were very typical and nothing to write about.

Overall, I think Netflix are digging their own grave by splashing so much cash into this movie that I'll probably forget in a week.

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.

It doesn't look like a cheap movie, but no chance that this movie had over two hundred million dollars in budget. It's a decent and enjoyable movie but it shouldn't cost that much. Spend your money on better things instead of this easily consumed but entertaining film. Companies like Netflix and Disney keep producing mediocre content when they have insane budgets. Do they spend every penny on the CGI and hire children to do the writing? The writing in Gray Man is not bad, but maybe we should expect more when they have an almost unlimited budget?

The action is good some of the time. The actors did a great job and it looks legit when they fight. Some action scenes use way too much greenscreen which is a shame. I thought we had learned by now after Tom Cruise's success. But of course it is much easier to do some of these sequences in the computer (and safer).

There are many location titles in this movie. Probably too many, but at least it becomes clear where we are. The environments are very nice, but the absolute best thing is neither the environments nor Ana De Armas, it's Ryan Gosling. Jesus, he's in phenomenal shape. Has he put on some weight for Barbie? It's great that he's back on the big screen. WFun to see him in an action role similar to James Bond or John Wick, and he does a great job. He's charismatic, good-looking, funny and has perfect comedic timing. Without Gosling this movie would've been a 5/10.

Ana De Armas is also great in the film. She has proven to be fierce in both this and James Bond. Soon we will surely see her starring in her own action film.

Unfortunately, before seeing the movie I saw some reviews and critics who criticized the movie a lot, classifying it as shallow, meaningless and so on. Obviously it's not a masterpiece of action movies and doesn't come close to Bourne or 007, however, it still manages to be a good movie, the plot is a little cliché and shallow has secondary plots that don't go deep and for me in that, the movie falls short. The action scenes have a lot of cuts which honestly takes the excitement out of the scene. The various locations, despite enhancing the film in terms of photography, are very beautiful.

The point for a lot of people not to have liked the movie is that it doesn't propose to be deep, it just introduces the characters and you have to accept them, there's not much explanation about why they are like that or how they got in that situation, it's a simple plot, for a simple movie and aimed at a large audience, does that make the movie bad? Obviously not. So I highly recommend this movie if you're just looking for fun and action scenes.