Ryan Gosling was 13 years old and spreading cheer “The Mickey Mouse Club.”In the twelve years that have passed, something must have happened. “The Notebook” “La La Land.”Canadian heartthrob, Nicolas Winding Refn, seems to be determined to prove that he can be cold-blooded, evenkeeled and unsentimental. Starting with Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” followed by the Danish director’s “Only God Forgives” and now playing the title character in the Russo brothers’ “The Gray Man,”An actor once exuded charisma in “Crazy Stupid Love”Has been mastering an inexpressive calm that borders on nihilism, maintaining his pulse steady and his poker face fixed while he takes on any adversaries.
Gosling doesn’t just want to be an action star; he wants to be the Hollywood version of Alain Delon, the handsome French icon who played a sociopath with perfect cheekbones in “Purple Noon”A hit man without any visible emotions “Le Samouraï.” “The Gray Man” is the payoff of Gosling’s low-key reinvention: an incredibly expensive, stunningly executed action vehicle in which he plays Six, an ex-con-turned-CIA assassin who’s so good at his job that he becomes a kind of liability, landing him at the top of the agency’s kill list.
This is a $200 million sham that Netflix will first release in theaters (on the 15th of July) and then on its streaming service a week later. “The Avengers: End Game” directors Anthony and Joe Russo’s answer to the James Bond franchise (which reached its end game, with Daniel Craig at least, in last year’s “No Time to Die”). “The Gray Man” has the huge, globe-trotting heft of that franchise and a few can’t-be-accidental overlaps — but more on that in a moment. Most important, in co-star (and ex-Captain America) Chris Evans, it has a villain who’s as flamboyantly over-the-top as Gosling is understated.
Both play professional killers who operate outside the limits of what is legally acceptable — lurking off the grid, in the shadowy “gray zone”This gives the CIA a plausible excuse for any murders they may have committed. Neither has a license to kill, exactly, though both do so at the behest of the same boss: newly appointed CIA group chief Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page).
Gosling’s nameless character was recruited straight out of prison by old-timer Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) as part of the experimental Sierra program. The idea is to make convicted killers strategic assassins by offering them a job. “freedom”In return for a certain amount of mandatory service to the agency. It sounds like a reckless, doomed-to-fail idea, though subtle clues — and later, more overt flashbacks — reveal that the crime that landed Gosling’s Sierra Six behind bars was a relatively moral one.
Six (not to confuse with 007), is a serial killer with a conscience. Even though most of his hits were ordered from above, they do not require any real judgement on his part, Six is no different. On the other hand, Evans’ Lloyd Hansen is a contract killer with an appetite for torture who relishes any opportunity to flout the rules.
In the film’s first hit, set in fluorescent-lit Bangkok, Six and fellow agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas) have been ordered to take out a mark at a flashy New Year’s Eve party. The Russos trust that their audience has seen a million films like this (the operation recalls the opening of James Cameron’s “True Lies” and even Netflix’s recent “Red Notice”). Stephen F. Windon, cinematographer, captures the action from a distance. He emphasizes the choreography and staging rather than the real, messy logistics of a fistfight.
It’s so many! “The Gray Man” depends on the its-in-our-DNA familiarity with action films and conspiracy thrillers, allowing the screenplay (credited to Joe Russo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) to take short cuts and logic leaps over far-fetched twists, like Six’s discovery that he’d been ordered to take out Sierra Four. It seems there’s been a regime change at the agency: Fitzroy and bureau chief Margaret Cahill (Alfre Woodard) are out, and Carmichael is dismantling the Sierra program one assassin at a time. Before Six completes his assignment, Four passes him a USB drive with incriminating evidence — the movie’s MacGuffin. The game of high-stakes hot potatoes begins.
Unlike the latest Bond installment (which subverted the stakes on an essentially invincible hero, proving him to be mortal after all), audiences are not seriously concerned for Six’s life. Fitzroy stated right from the beginning that Six was his. “disposable.”Six is relieved to learn that his contract has expired and calls his boss, telling him to rephrase the jokes. “I know there wasn’t some palm trees and 401(k) planned for me, but tell me you guys had some exit strategy.”Lloyd Hansen is his exit strategy. This nutter will stop at nothing in order to seize Six and steal the driving.
There’s nothing terribly original about the storytelling. Have a look at “Shooter,”Many of these are available. “John Wick,” add a dash of Jason Bourne, shaken (but not stirred) into the license-to-kill formula, and you’ve got the basic idea. What’s the best? “The Gray Man” exciting — and let’s not beat around the bush: This is the most exciting original action property Netflix has delivered since “Bright” — are the shades the ensemble bring to their characters and the little ways in which the Russos come through where those other films fell short.
De Armas, in a small supporting role, was one of the most important things about this film. “No Time to Die.”The Russos offer her a lot more. Whether blasting helicopters with a rocket launcher or rescuing Six in a cherry red Audi RS7, she’s up to the task. In another overlap, rumors have hinted that Page could fill Bond’s shoes — so why not cast him as the movie’s dapper puppetmaster? Instead of giving us another supervillain bent to world dominance, why not give us the tenth variation? “The Gray Man”We get something much scarier: It makes us distrust peacekeeping institutions and deputizes a lunatic, mercenary (in Evans), who is willing to kill cops as well as civilians in his bid to nix Six.
Gosling takes it all in stride, keeping his expressions as passive as possible throughout — apart from two scenes in which he breaks the Noh mask to wink at Fitzroy’s teenage niece (Julia Butters), taken hostage by Hansen. That’s a cheap child-endangerment detail (again, no worse than “No Time to Die”) in an otherwise serious-minded blockbuster outing, which is strongest when serving up international set-pieces: the Bangkok hit, a high-altitude extraction-turned-escape, a Vienna double-cross and the epic showstopper in Prague, where Six sits handcuffed to a stone bench while the world’s deadliest assassins converge, sparking a crosstown firefight on a runaway tram. These are just a few of the scenes that might make an action movie memorable. “The Gray Man”It pulls off all four and the castle-smashing Croatian final, putting it on par to double-you know-who.
“The Gray Man“ will be released in theaters July 15, before landing on Netflix on July 22.