The Gray Man

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?

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.

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"

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.

Two solid hours of efficient Netflix content is what's on offer here, the action-thriller equivalent of emptiness with nothing but cliche thrillers and mediocre action.

The Gray Man is mostly a collection of tired spy tropes, directed in a muddled and baffling way, that seemingly exists to set up what seems like will be a fairly unimaginative franchise.

The dialogues were cringe and didn't excite at all. The only grace was seeing Ryan Gosling on screen. A big budget film with neither strong screenplay nor efficient set up, The Gray Man feels like a sunk ship with lots of efforts vanishing in vain.

Aside from two hand-to-hand combat scenes, the fights are a dimly-lit mess of quick cuts and bullets flying, something similar to what Michael Bay has done all over these years.

Being a big budget film, The Gray Man is a disappointment to a greater extent, considering that the project had A List actors, but a poor storyline.

My Rating: 5/10.