Gosling, Evans play empty, soulless spy games in thriller
The last time Ryan Gosling was sent to murder a guy in Bangkok was about nine years ago, when he starred in Nicolas Winding Refn’s sick-puppy art-thriller “Only God Forgives.” Gosling played a handsome cipher with a knack for killing people. He gives us another one of those ciphers in the new Netflix espionage thriller “The Gray Man.”
“The Gray Man” was directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, though it’s such a synthetic, soulless bundle of goods that it barely feels touched by human hands. Full of smirking one-liners, international locations and acts of gratuitously unpleasant violence, it’s basically Netflix Winding Refn; it’s globe-trotting comic nihilism for the whole streaming-loving family. It has a bunch of supporting players pulled from the Netflix rotation: Wagner Moura from “Narcos,” Rege-Jean Page of “Bridgerton” and Jessica Henwick from “Iron Fist.”
Because the violence is generally bloodless and murkily shot, the movie has a PG-13 rating, which seems a bit lax for a movie in which Billy Bob Thornton gets his fingernails ripped out. I have no idea whether that particular torture scene comes from the source material, not having read Mark Greaney’s “The Gray
Man.”
It all begins with an unnamed man (Gosling) sitting quietly in a Florida prison in 2003, where he’s serving a long sentence for murder. We’re informed that his crime was entirely justified. This guy is a trained killer with a conscience,
which brings him to the attention of CIA veteran Donald Fitzroy (Thornton), who offers him an early out if he agrees to turn freelance assassin. Cut to the present day, and Gosling is now Sierra Six, the top member of a top-secret squad to whom the Agency outsources its dirty jobs.
The latest of those jobs finds Six in Bangkok. As with every mission, Six has no idea who he’s killing or why, but this time he learns far too much. The assignment is bungled, and Six, realizing he’s next on the CIA hit list, goes on the run. The action shifts to Baku, Azerbaijan, Berlin and Prague, with a brief flashback to Hong Kong, where we see Six bonding with his old mentor Fitzroy’s niece, Claire (Julia Butters). When she’s kidnapped in the present day, you know it’s only a matter of time before Six comes to her rescue.
The script throws a lot of spy-thriller filler at the screen. A computer drive full of highly incriminating data goes missing, and historic European landmarks are treated like cannon fodder.
The liveliest presence is Chris Evans as Lloyd
Hansen, a sociopathic CIA reject — he’s the teenager endangerer — who’s called in to run point. Sporting a muscle polo and a malevolent grin, Evans is clearly enjoying his liberation from Captain America heroics. So, presumably, are the Russos, who previously directed Evans in “Captain America: Winter Soldier” and “Avengers: Endgame.” In “The Gray Man,” they try unsuccessfully to affect a breezy comic tone with one hand while maiming half their ensemble with the other.
Gosling for the most part plays it cool. He’s always been good at inhabiting emotional and psychological nonentities. Sometimes Gosling can make that restraint work for a character, like his emotionally tamped-down Neil Armstrong in “First Man” (2018), the last movie he appeared in before this one. It’s good to have him back, even if good, in this case, is far from the operative word.
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of strong violence, and strong language)
Running time: 2:07
How to watch: In theaters ; streaming on Netflix July 22