Netflix 'The Gray Man': Fun but standard, critics aren't THRILLED with Russo bros' film
Joe and Anthony Russo are set to enthrall viewers with their upcoming movie ‘The Gray Man’ and fans are beyond excited to see Ryan Gosling fighting it out with Chris Evans in the action extravaganza. The movie was shown to a handful of critics a couple of days ago and the first wave of reactions to the movie has already made it clear that epic action sequences and performances from Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans are going to blow everyone away.
The film revolves around a CIA Black Ops mercenary named Court Gentry (Gosling) accidentally uncovering some dark secrets about the organization he works for. As soon as the organization gets to know about it, he becomes a primary target and is hunted around the world by psychopathic former colleague Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) and international assassins. As of now, the movie has generated mixed reviews from the critics and currently, holds a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Screen Rant’s Molly Freeman noted that ‘The Gray Man’ is a “step above” than the streaming service’s earlier action movies and offers a more “completely entertaining movie experience”. Meanwhile, Variety’s Peter Debruge hailed the movie as the “most exciting original action property” by Netflix since ‘Bright’. On the other hand, Hoai-Tran Bui from Slashfilm said, “The car chases are full of tactile, nail-biting stunts, the action scenes explosive, and the Russo brothers are the latest filmmakers to try their hand at replicating the heights of that ‘Dark Knight’ Hong Kong fight scene.”
Richard Trenholm from CNET praised the movie’s action sequences and wrote, “The Gray Man is up there with the stylized likes of ‘Atomic Blonde’ and might give ‘John Wick’ a run for his money.” JoBlo’s Movie Network gave the movie a positive review and wrote, “Directors Anthony and Joe Russo have made a tentpole blockbuster with action and carnage on the scale of one of their Marvel movies.”
Deadline’s movie critic Pete Hammond was impressed with the movie and called it a “whiz-bang nonstop summer ride”. He added, “Right from the opening the Russos show that this is going to be a whiz-bang nonstop summer ride, an action film that wants to play with the best of them and delivers one thrilling set piece after another, hoping to set the genre on fire. It also has something thematically to say about trust and family and succeeds on all counts, not least because of a very smart script with a lot of pithy dialogue for Gosling and Evans in particular.”
However, there was a section of critics that didn’t like the movie and said that the movie had nothing “original” to offer. Matt Singer from Screenrush said, “Once the scale becomes such that computers need to step in and provide the special effects, this very expensive movie begins to look very cheap. Netflix did not get their money’s worth out of their VFX.”
Chicago Sun Times’ Richard Roeper called the movie “waste of time” and labeled it a “brain-dead” Netflix actioner. He added, “The bloated, bombastic and brain-dead Netflix actioner ‘The Gray Man’ is a depressingly formulaic waste of the talents of the Russo Brothers and the A-list cast.” Meanwhile, Robbie Collin from The Telegraph wrote, “Around halfway through a sustained shootout in Prague, the sheer thundering mindlessness of the whole enterprise becomes impossible to ignore.”
On the other hand, Sidhant Adlakha from IGN felt that movie suffers from a lack of identity. He added, “The Gray Man is a product of too many conflicting approaches with no unifying vision — not unlike their previous effort, the Tom Holland-fronted ‘Cherry’ — resulting in a spy movie mish-mash that takes far too long to be enjoyable.”
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Although the movie has received mixed reviews, critics hailed the performances from Gosling, Evans, Armas, and Dhanush.
‘The Gray Man’ will be premiering exclusively on Netflix on Friday, July 22.