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"

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.

I'm not going to make specific comments about the movie and spoil the fun, ALL the other 1-3 star reviews have thoroughly taken care of that. I'm here to state it's blatantly obvious the film industry is trending downwards at full speed. Even with an all star cast, proven directors, and an ample budget, this was the best they could do? What's most alarming are the 8-10 star ratings for a movie that nothing more than cut and paste of random fights, shoot outs, character decision making devoid of logic, and very predictable absurd action sequences. We'll never get back to the days of not being required to completely shut off our brains "start to finish" in order to enjoy a movie.

I couldn't get passed the few bad reviews I tried to read on here. Pining for "the good ole days" I mean what were they expecting to see here? It's an action movie with above average action. A lot of over the top stuff. For me it was the back and forth between the lead actors that I liked. Very entertaining and you know what? That's what I'm looking for in a movie, to be entertained. They made you really hate the new breed of CIA, they made you love the villain Chris Evan's (when do you not like him) and Ryan Gosling does his little cute deadpan jokes thing that he keeps doing lately that you've seen and yet never expect him to be funny. I mean seriously I've been aware of things he did growing up, never really paid much attention to him but I've seen stuff that he's been in but all of a sudden he's just hilarious to me. The Nice Guys really showed this off.

Anyway the movie is a good watch. It's not life changing, but it'll make you smile. What's wrong with that?