We owe brothers Anthony and Joe Russo one of the best films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU): Captain America: the Winter Soldier (Captain America: The Winter Soldier). The duo also directed three other said MCU films, including Avengers: Endgame (Avengers: Endgame). Produced for Netflix, The Gray Man (The gray man), which stars Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana de Armas in high spirits, sees the Russos abandon superpowers, but embrace their taste for fast-paced action scenes more than ever. Too bad the script isn’t of the same caliber.
Co-written by Joe Russo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the latter two already scribes ofEndgame, the film gets off to a promising start, when a certain Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton, with a tasty stoicism) recruits for the account of an ultra-secret government agency an irreverent young prisoner (Ryan Gosling, all of charisma and smiles corner) named Court. To tell the truth, the dialogues are in themselves ordinary, but the two stars deliver them like a game of ping-pong, so that we are immediately seduced.
The same phenomenon is repeated with the entry on the scene of Chris Evans, who offers a variation of his character from Knives Out (At loggerheads) by raising the level of psychopathology several notches.
The deceptively twisty plot basically tells how Court, codenamed “Six”, finds himself having to flee the agency when it falls into the hands of a deceitful deputy director. Which deputy director launches on the heels of Six, who is in possession of compromising documents, a former agent, Lloyd (Evans) as dangerous as he is unscrupulous. Hence the kidnapping of Fitzroy’s young niece in a section that is reminiscent of the memory of the cult Commando (1985), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As an allied agent of Six, and who in this case never ceases to save his buttocks, Ana de Armas also pulls out of the game, like the always formidable Alfre Woodard, brief but memorable as an agency director. retired, but not on the sidelines.
As a substitute
For the count, the high-flying cast turns out to be much better than the film itself. Eventually, The Gray Man is indeed akin to a draft substitute for Jason Bourne with James Bond sauce.
The first act is the most unpredictable and entertaining, and the third, the most redundant and unfinished. The epilogue appears all the longer as everything that takes place there proves to be perfectly predictable.
Note also that throughout, the bill is alternately very neat, and very banal, oddly. You should know that on these big productions, in addition to the main one, a second team shoots material in parallel. Knowing this, it is to wonder if the contribution of this one was less well produced.
Obviously, the door remains wide open at the end for a sequel. If so, one can only hope the Russo Brothers care more about the script.