The Gray Man

Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, The Gray Man follows a CIA assassin (Ryan Gosling’s Sierra Six) as he’s hunted down by a psychotic fellow agent (Chris Evans’ Lloyd Hansen) after a job goes off the rails. Filmmakers Anthony and Joe Russo, armed with Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, and Joe Russo’s screenplay, deliver an exceedingly (and often excessively) polished thriller that’s really only effective in fits and starts, as the movie, which runs a palpably overlong 129 minutes, suffers from an ongoing emphasis on set-pieces that are hardly able to engender the excitement and tension one might’ve anticipated – with the Russo siblings’ overuse of computer-generated special effects, coupled with their ongoing reliance on infuriatingly jittery camerawork, ensuring that the myriad of action-oriented sequences suffer from a distinctly tedious and downright incoherent feel. It’s a shame, ultimately, given that The Gray Man does boast a handful of compelling (quieter) interludes and strong work from its various performers, with, in terms of the latter, Gosling’s expectedly solid efforts here matched (and occasionally exceeded) by Evans’ entertainingly larger-than-life turn as the mustache-twirling villain. By the time the padded-out (and entirely underwhelming) climax rolls around, however, The Gray Man‘s few positive attributes have been rendered completely moot and the movie is, in the final analysis, just another misguided and hopelessly slick modern blockbuster.

** out of ****