The Gray Man – No major surprises but delivers the goods!

Bharath Vijayakumar

The one liner for films involving agents, assassins and their kind, is more often than not, the same - the protagonist, who is an agent or assassin, is on the run from his own bosses. In The Gray Man, Ryan Gosling plays Sierra Six, a CIA black ops mercenary. He gets his hands on a drive that could expose the skeletons from the closet of his boss (Regé-Jean Page). Chris Evans plays Lloyd Hansen, a former CIA agent, who was expelled for his notorious ways. He is now given the job to kill Sierra Six and retrieve the drive. Guns, chases, huge action set pieces and everything you expect follows.

In many ways, The Gray Man is a standard kind of film. This could either be good news or bad news, depending on what you look for in a film like this. The film is devoid of any major surprises. But it delivers what it sets out to. The action set pieces are extremely crisp. It works in a way but then it also means that most of them don’t stay with you once the film is done. There is an emotional angle involving a teenaged girl amidst all the action and this keeps you invested with the principal characters to an extent. Ryan Gosling plays the unflustered hero with a certain charm. Chris Evans has fun playing the bad guy while Ana de Armas gets to show her acrobatic capabilities.

Dhanush plays an important character. Though the screen time is relatively less, he gets the best introduction scene in the film. You can imagine the wolf whistles for this scene, had the movie been released in theatres in Tamil Nadu. Now, this actually brings this question to mind. Would The Gray Man have worked better at the cinemas? Probably yes. It is the kind of popcorn movie that you want to watch with a crowd. On OTT, it is what you would call a watchable actioner.

Rating: 3/5