freshchris

Now I am going to start with a reference not all may get, but this film reminds me of The Big Hit with Mark Wahlberg... Premise and cast could be good, but what happens if you let directors off the leash like this, a maddening mash up of clichés and genres.

The Gray Man is essentially the love child of Bourne Identity and a massive lump of cheese. Every line, every sequence is a cliche ridden ride that never feels like you actually went anywhere.

The actors are all good, I know they are I've seen them in other things, but somehow they have made them bad actors, which is an incredible skill.

Also, whoever let the directors have a drone needs to have a long hard look at themselves.

Now, I had qualms about the Ayer one when he was forced by the studio to make it funnier as I think they should have let him have the freedom to do what he wanted. But letting Gunn have freedom was like letting a toddler have sharpies on a new painted wall.

I would have marked this lower, but there were some redeemable parts. Harley Quinn was good, the intro was good. It was funny to see bloody body's ripped apart or shot to start with, but after two hours of the same thing it gets tiresome.

I won't spoil the plot, but it becomes like a lovechild of the expendables and Doctor who. Which is fine, if it wasn't the suicide squad. It lacked darkness and spite, instead was trying to hard to be funny whilst blowing people's limbs apart.

I came out of the cinema not really knowing what Gunn was trying to do.

Plenty of people have enjoyed it, and that shows the film was aimed for mass appeal which maybe is what the studio wanted. But for me, I will never watch another one of this new Disney wannabe DC drivel.

Many will disagree, but I am now going to watch the Ayer version and appreciate what we had before Gunn got hold of it. But I don't blame Gunn: 'If you let an infant drive a car and it crashes, you don't blame the infant, you blame the parents who allowed them to drive' .

If you aren't accustomed to Spooks, it's a British series about MI5 Spies. Many of the episodes focused on the IRA, and if Jackie Chan (or Quan) had been recruited in an episode, this is what the result would have been.

The Foreigner is much more a thriller than an action film, and Jackie Chan's screen time is not as much as you'd assume, but it actually makes it a better film as it shows a guy caught up in a world he is not part of(albeit one he can destroy with some crazy marine training), rather than a traditional revenge film which follows the revenge seeker. The film is centred around Pierce Brosnan's character and the mirroring of trying to sort the mess a terrorist attack causes, but from the other end of the snake.

The filming is classically British, and the explosions may not live upto purists standards, but make no mistake, this is an amazing film. The plot twists will keep you hooked and the cat and mouse genre is refreshed by a really great script.

It's a shame this isn't coming to British cinemas, but at the same time, I am glad I watched it on a TV, as it felt like a great episode of Spooks (MI-5 http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0160904/) and no-one will ever be able to tell me that is a bad thing.