The Gray Man | Film Review

 

This film came out on Netflix a while ago and was really highly anticipated. Although I didn't love the premise, I'm a fan of the actors involved, so I wanted to see it.

When CIA spy Six (Ryan Gosling) discovers agency secrets and goes on the run, he is hunted by rogue operative Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans).

As I said, I didn't love the premise, so it wasn't really a surprise to me that I didn't like the film.

For a start, the gratuitous violence gets a bit boring after a while. Fight scenes really make an action film, and fighting for the sake of fighting, which doesn't move the plot forward, just feels like a waste of time.

The film has moments of humour, but these lines and quips never feel that funny - especially because the majority of them are used in the film's trailer.

I never cared about, or felt invested in, any of the characters. Six was the only character who had anything interesting about him, but even then I didn't care about him as much as I needed to for the film to work.

There is a change of location, what feels like, every five minutes in this film, and it makes things disorientating and jarring. I would definitely have preferred the film to take place in maybe 2 or 3 places.

The downfall of the film for me, is that I didn't care about anything that happened. The characters, the plot, anything. While watching, I kept thinking that there is probably no way the film would be made without the starring actors - I just wish they had been given better material to work with.

The film finally caught my interest near the end - fighting for love and family is much more interesting than fighting for government secrets on an encrypted USB stick.

The relationship between Six and Claire (Julia Butters) was the only thing that made the film worth watching.

Overall, this film didn't really have any redeeming features for me. I might watch it again and find that I was wrong, but as of right now I wouldn't really recommend it.

3/10