The pharaonic budget is evident in every scene…but it doesn’t guarantee the overall quality of this Ryan Gosling-Chris Evans movie.
His name is Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) and he languishes in prison. From there he comes through Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton), a CIA agent who offers him semi-freedom in exchange for assassination attempts. Court thus transforms into Sierra Six. He quickly becomes the agency’s most effective hitman…until the day he refuses to execute a target that reveals to him that his bosses really aren’t good people.
Overnight, Six becomes a threat to the CIA and must be removed. The man in charge of the operation? Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans, here sporting a Freddie Mercury mustache), a particularly dangerous killer, and a psychopath at that. Of course, Hansen Six is chasing the world in an orgy of battles, chases, explosions, and other wide-ranging effects.
The $200 million production budget can be seen in everything. The sets – from the French chateau to the Asian skyscrapers – the stunts, the cars, etc. On the technical side, the Russo brothers make an excessive but very judicious use of drones, resulting in certain 360-degree shots and impressive tracking shots leads.
So much for the flowers. And the can? The pot is anything but… starting with the scenario so flimsy it makes you wonder why it took 129 minutes. Then The Gray Man has an unmistakable déjà vu vibe. After all, the whole feature film looks like a video game… but without the controller, which allows for at least some investment in the action. Because by stunning the audience, the Russo brothers make them passive and quickly induce a certain tiredness.
By wanting too much to justify the budget, filmmakers forget the essentials: too much is like too little.
Rating: 3 out of 5