BEFORE: Ana de Armas carries over from "The Informer" - which came in very handy tonight because I don't have any other movies on my list with Chris Evans or Ryan Gosling in them. This film got a lot of attention when it hit Netflix last September - it seems to have cooled off a bit since then, but that's to be expected, everybody's running around now trying to watch all the Oscar-nominated films, and this isn't one of those.
I realize I've been hitting the action films hard this January, and I've still got a few to go - but hey, January's just that kind of month. Last January it was all Bruce Willis action films and Chinese action films and Marvel action films and 50 Cent action films, and I had so many action films that I had to cut out a whole section of them and move the Nicolas Cage action films to March. Yeah, I may have over-programmed January 2022. But I've learned not to do that, so January 2023 hopefully will have JUST ENOUGH action films so I can cram them all into 31 days. Here's hoping. Just 6 films to go in January, I think three of those count as "action" films, and then I'm on to the romance chain.
THE PLOT: When the CIA's most skilled operative, whose true identity is known to none, accidentally uncovers dark agency secrets, a psychopathic former colleague puts a bounty on his head, setting off a global manhunt by international assassins.
AFTER: This could be the first film in a new franchise, there's a whole series of "Gray Man" novels written by Mark Greaney, who co-wrote the last few books that Tom Clancy wrote, and then wrote more books with the Jack Ryan character after Clancy died in 2013. (I only JUST learned that Clancy died, found out via a Jeopardy! clue last week...you can't really blame me, because there's four Jack Ryan books where they made "Tom Clancy" part of the title, and if you didn't know better, you'd swear that was the author's name on the book cover, and that he wrote it, so he must still be alive. Note: An author's name should NEVER be part of the title, it's unbecoming.). There are nine more books in the series, so maybe they don't need to look for the new James Bond, maybe he's already here, and his name is Six. (Not even double-O Six?)
The title "The Gray Man" refers to the fact that the title character becomes a freelance assassin, so he's neither a "white hat" hero or a "black hat" villain - he's in-between, get it? It's cutesy, but it just doesn't seem feasible, I mean, just not caring whether the thing you do is right or wrong, good or evil, isn't quite the same thing as being in the middle. If you kill somebody, even for the "right" reasons from one person's perspective, you could probably find somebody who thinks killing that person is the "wrong" thing to do, so in essence the definitions of right and wrong aren't meaningless, they just depend on your own allegiances.
Six is recruited from jail, we later find out he was serving time for murder (we find out who he killed later on, no spoilers here) - and he's told that if he can be turned into a weapon and aimed at the right target, he can put those assassin skills to use, and can get his sentence commuted, which is only of value if he does the job well and survives. So this is "James Bond" crossed with "The Suicide Squad", in a way. If he doesn't do the job well and/or dies, well, I guess that's a wash, then.
Fast forward eighteen years, and agent Six in the agency's Sierra program is given a target who's accused of selling national security secrets in Bangkok. During a national festival, no less, which has to be some kind of party foul. Six's gun jams, or perhaps he claims that his gun jammed because there were civilians in the waym and decides to take his target out face-to-face. They both jump out of a high window and end up on an active fireworks barge - which looks great but is a rather stupid place for a fight if you think about it. Six gets the upper hand but also learns that the target is (or used to be) Sierra Four. Four hands him a necklace that contains an encrypted drive, which allegedly proves corrupt behavior from CIA officials.
Six follows his own protocol and mails the drive to an ex-agent he trusts, then contacts his mentor, who also trained the other Sierra agents, to confirm the identity of the man he just killed. This is just the start of things, because then another ex-CIA agent, Lloyd Hansen, is brought in to track down Six and retrieve the drive. They lure Six in by kidnapping his mentor's niece, who he also has a connection with. Is this a bit overly complicated? Well, sure, but it keeps leading the action from one fight scene to the next, so at least they keep constantly building up to...something.
The best sequence is probably the long one on the tram in Prague, it's a bit reminiscent of the bus fight from "Shang-Chi", but it's even more over-the-top. Remember these same directors had a lot of fight scenes in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and these are at least as exciting as those, if not more. (The actor who played Captain America is here, but he's cast as the villain this time, to shake things up a bit.). While this isn't a superhero film, the lead actors get so banged up, shot and stabbed several times each, so they might as well have super powers, the end result is the same.
(No, wait, I forgot about the plane sequence - that was pretty cool, too. Confusing as hell, but also hella cool.)
Hansen calls in "Lone Wolf", a mercenary, to take out Six, because three squads of soldiers couldn't do it, and that leads to more fight scenes, more stabby-stabby, and another three-way hand-to-hand fight. Finally the "good" agents have to break into the Czech castle that Hansen is using as a base to rescue Six's mentor and the mentor's niece, and then there's a final showdown in the hedge maze behind the Overlook hotel. The constantly-shifting alliances shift once more, and there's a massive cover-up to blame everything on the dead agents so they can bring all the alive ones back for a sequel. One supposes, anyway. They're also talking about a spin-off for the Lone Wolf guy, might as well. If John Wick can get Chapters 4 and 5 green-lit, they can probably get four movies out of the "Gray Man" books.
Also starring Ryan Gosling (last seen in "First Man"), Chris Evans (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Billy Bob Thornton (last seen ni "A Million Little Pieces"), Jessica Henwick (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Dhanush, Alfre Woodard (last seen in "Fatherhood"), Regé-Jean Page (last seen in "Mortal Engines"), Wagner Moura (last seen in "Rio, I Love You"), Julia Butters (last seen in "Term Life"), Shea Whigham (ditto), DeObia Oparei (last seen in "Dirty Pretty Things"), Robert Kazinsky (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Daz Crawford, Callan Mulvey (last seen in "Outlaw King"), Charlit Dae, Chris Castaldi, Jeremy Tichy, Jimmy Jean-Louis (last seen in "The Game of Their Lives"), Eme Ikwuakor (last seen in "Concussion"), Karen Jin Beck, Kate Blumberg, Camille Marquez, Brent McGee, Jacob Michael with a cameo from Joe Russo (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame").
RATING: 7 out of 10 fingernails, of course
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