User Reviews

It doesn't look like a cheap movie, but no chance that this movie had over two hundred million dollars in budget. It's a decent and enjoyable movie but it shouldn't cost that much. Spend your money on better things instead of this easily consumed but entertaining film. Companies like Netflix and Disney keep producing mediocre content when they have insane budgets. Do they spend every penny on the CGI and hire children to do the writing? The writing in Gray Man is not bad, but maybe we should expect more when they have an almost unlimited budget?

The action is good some of the time. The actors did a great job and it looks legit when they fight. Some action scenes use way too much greenscreen which is a shame. I thought we had learned by now after Tom Cruise's success. But of course it is much easier to do some of these sequences in the computer (and safer).

There are many location titles in this movie. Probably too many, but at least it becomes clear where we are. The environments are very nice, but the absolute best thing is neither the environments nor Ana De Armas, it's Ryan Gosling. Jesus, he's in phenomenal shape. Has he put on some weight for Barbie? It's great that he's back on the big screen. WFun to see him in an action role similar to James Bond or John Wick, and he does a great job. He's charismatic, good-looking, funny and has perfect comedic timing. Without Gosling this movie would've been a 5/10.

Ana De Armas is also great in the film. She has proven to be fierce in both this and James Bond. Soon we will surely see her starring in her own action film.

Okay so it's not art house, doesn't require any thinking and the plot isn't exactly new but hey, it's fun and we were never bored. The action scenes were well done and all the actors did a good job. Sometimes you just wanna be entertained, worked for us.

I think I've come to terms that outside Marvel the Russo brothers are average directors.

We are treated to an above average action thriller with questionable cinematography. Gosling and Evans were good in their roles which was nice to see. Pacing was decent.

The plot and action sequences were very typical and nothing to write about.

Overall, I think Netflix are digging their own grave by splashing so much cash into this movie that I'll probably forget in a week.

Unfortunately, before seeing the movie I saw some reviews and critics who criticized the movie a lot, classifying it as shallow, meaningless and so on. Obviously it's not a masterpiece of action movies and doesn't come close to Bourne or 007, however, it still manages to be a good movie, the plot is a little cliché and shallow has secondary plots that don't go deep and for me in that, the movie falls short. The action scenes have a lot of cuts which honestly takes the excitement out of the scene. The various locations, despite enhancing the film in terms of photography, are very beautiful.

The point for a lot of people not to have liked the movie is that it doesn't propose to be deep, it just introduces the characters and you have to accept them, there's not much explanation about why they are like that or how they got in that situation, it's a simple plot, for a simple movie and aimed at a large audience, does that make the movie bad? Obviously not. So I highly recommend this movie if you're just looking for fun and action scenes.

Certainly not a bad movie, and the action is actually quite enjoyable.. or the movie is at least a lot more enjoyable than the attempts at movies that Netflix has done recently.

It is however a bit of a basic "Jason Bourne" meets "John wick" meets "James Bond" type story - filled with cliche's and the dialogue and acting are a bit bland, and honestly, with the well known names in this movie, it probably should have been a bit better.

It was nice seeing Gosling in this roll - But he probably pulled of the "I don't really care anymore" attitude a bit too much, meaning there isn't any excitement.

Evans was enjoyable. Or at least nice to see a different part of him after seeing him for 10+ years in the Marvel universe.

However, I'm worried that they might be trying to set up a franchise here, which might not be a good thing. James Bond can do that, Jason Bourne did it, John wick certainly did it. But there isn't enough in this movie to set up the franchise.. here it's a "meh" film where the "meh" attempted to hide in a whole heap of action scenes.. granted. Some of those action scenes are pretty good. But it's still surrounded by "meh"

Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) is a man serving a lengthy prison sentence for murder when he's approach by CIA Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thorton). Fitzroy impressed by Gentry's lethal skills and lack of familial connections offers him recruitment into the Sierra program, wherein convicted felons agree to work for the CIA as deniable off the books assets who can "operate in the gray" in exchange for commuted sentences, which Gentry accepts taking the designation Sierra Six ("Six" for short). 18 years later Gentry continues to operate for the CIA as the last member of the Sierra program much to the ire of Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page) who has succeeded Fitzroy in position and voices disdain for Fitzroy's tenure including the Sierra program. When an assassination in Bangkok assigned to Six reveals his target was Sierra Four, Four gives Six an encrypted drive that was Carmichael's true objective and this sends Six into the wind. Carmichael seeking to retrieve the drive before it can be decrypted enlists the aid of sociopathic private contractor and former CIA assassin Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) to take down Six and retrieve the drive and Hansen issues a bounty on Six that sends every assassin after Six. Additionally Hansen takes hostage Six's now retired mentor Fitzroy as well as Fitzroy's niece Claire (Julia Butters) to ensure Six has no allies.

The Gray Man is an adaptation of the novel of the same name that is the first in a series by author Mark Greaney who first came to prominence as a co-author on several Tom Clancy novels during Clancy's final years. Published in 2009, attempts had been made as far back as 2011 with Brad Pitt initially slated to play the lead only for the project to never come together, and later Charlize Theron entered discussions to play a genderswapped version of The Gray Man but this too never came to pass and Theron instead pursued her adaptation of The Coldest City with Atomic Blonde. The eventually landed at Netflix in June of 2020 with directors Anthony and Joe Russo who'd directed some of the MCUs best regarded films and a budget of $200 million making it the most expensive project to ever be tackled by Netflix. With a well regarded series of books and an A-List team behind and in front of the camera, it's clear Netflix wants this to be a long lasting franchise and given all those solid parts it probably will be, but while the movie is entertaining it's not going to be the replacement for Bond of Mission: Impossible the producers clearly want (yet anyway).

To start off on the best aspects of The Gray Man, the movie delivers everything you hope to see from a big budget directorial effort by the Russo Brothers with the plethora of international locales, epic scope of the action, and thrilling and creative action sequences that wow and dazzle with the technical craft firing on all cylinders. The movie features a great supporting cast with Bond alum Ana de Armas as Dani Miranda a nice Deuteragonist to the movie even if she does feel like she ducks in and out appearing at just the right time after we've lost track of her, Billy Bob Thorton is quite good as Fitzroy and brings his quirky offbeat charisma to the well worn mentor figure as reliable as ever, and Julia Butters is also very good as Fitroy's niece Claire with Fitzroy and Claire nicely positioned for Six as a surrogate family who add emotional weight to the stakes. But hands down the best performance is Chris Evans playing wildly against type as Lloyd Hansen who's about as far from his Captain America persona as you can get without playing Hitler. Hansen is an absolute monster and he clearly loves every minute of it as he revels in sadistic glee at trying to take down Six and alternates his superior smirk with bouts of violent and explosive rage that more often than not have a lethal edge to them as his handler Suzanne played by Jessica Henwick tries in vain to keep tis rabid dog on a leash. The movie's really solid and engaging entertaining with the supporting cast, the action, and the villains elevating the very stock "stolen list" plot that's part and parcel to most spy movies, but the movie doesn't do all that much at making the titular Gray Man himself all that interesting with Six feeling more akin to an audience proxy than a fully fleshed character.

While Gosling is a good actor and effectively plays "strong and silent" type hard edged protagonists as seen in Drive, I never felt like that was a stylistic choice here and more like Gosling's character was just a blank slate. Admittedly they do give Gosling more meat to chew on around the halfway point and even gives him opportunity for some humor, but for a good stretch of the movie Six is very opaque as a character with the nature of who and why he murdered someone not revealed until the beginning of the third act. I think that's what holds this movie back from being on the same level as the best of 007 or Mission: Impossible because it doesn't have a hero as defined as James Bond or Ethan Hunt in their best adventures, I do think however it's better than Quantum of Solace, Spectre, Mission: Impossible II & III, and especially that last Jason Bourne film, but it's still not quite at the level of the best of the comparable spy franchises.

The Gray Man is a solid entry in the genre of spy themed action thrillers and will definitely satisfy the appetites of those waiting for Mission: Impossible to close its book and a new face to say "Bond, James Bond" as it delivers on action, spectacle, and character to solid measure. The movie doesn't make its titular Gray Man the most interesting protagonist with his monosyllabic title and largely stoic delivery in the first half keeping us from getting to know him all that much character wise, but there is solid ground developed if they do decide to pursue a sequel.

I'm not going to make specific comments about the movie and spoil the fun, ALL the other 1-3 star reviews have thoroughly taken care of that. I'm here to state it's blatantly obvious the film industry is trending downwards at full speed. Even with an all star cast, proven directors, and an ample budget, this was the best they could do? What's most alarming are the 8-10 star ratings for a movie that nothing more than cut and paste of random fights, shoot outs, character decision making devoid of logic, and very predictable absurd action sequences. We'll never get back to the days of not being required to completely shut off our brains "start to finish" in order to enjoy a movie.

A suicide squad recruiter makes the call, you're out of jail but you know they'll let you fall, information is passed on, now it's time to make a run, as from the shadows, mercenaries, start to trawl.

A full blown, in your face, aggressive, violent, wild embrace, whose editing is a bit suspect, not that original, but has effect; you've seen it several times before, not sure it leaves you wanting more, some stunts are quite over the top, usually against a great backdrop - and apart from Captain America, everybody else plays themselves.

Rushing from place to place after opening with a colorful killing in Bangkok adds little to get us into the story.

IMHO relying on Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas proven star qualities fails to substitute a proper establishment of their characters in this movie. Of course as many others I wondered who took all the money Netflix paid for this production but as with so many other big productions today, it's not the point if CGI, actors or travel expenses of the crew were overpriced, the problem lies in the script. The art in script writing is to build up characters and a story. If you don't know why things happen, you don't care and all the surprises and zigzags of the plot loose a lot of their potential.

Netflix finally made a good high budget action movie that strays away from the high budget action comedies with middle of the road action and comedy they have been making like Red Notice and The Man From Toronto. All this movie needed was great action and enjoyable character performances and a serviceable story and it delivers. The action in this movie can range from a little choppy to very slick but it's overall really good. Chris Evans as a villainous maniac is absolutely amazing to watch and Ryan Gosling and Ana De Armas are simply bad asses. Definitely worth seeing in the theater rather than Netflix.

This movie started off okay, some clever dialog, some good action scenes still grounded in reality, (you know, where Newton's laws still apply), and some very creative camera angles. Then, as usually happens, it turned into a Roadrunner/Wilie Coyote cartoon. Humans became superhumans, injuries, no matter how numerous and serious, never slowed our protagonist and one man bested armies. This was so bad...I GUARANTEE a sequel!

Good movie with good acting and interesting locations, but too much reliance on bang and boom action. It would be better if one or two of the endless gunfire scenes could be replaced with some clever discoveries or dialogue. Almost forgot - the repartee between the Ryan Gosling and Julia Butters is great. Coulda used more of that.

Early on I sensed the potential for a movie series similar to James Bond, but perhaps closer to Derek Flint. That might happen, but I'm probably gonna be disappointed because there wasn't much Derek Flint in this one.

Woulda been nice if they had replaced some of the explosions with explanations, or even deeper backstory. But they didn't. Still, it's worth watching. Maybe there'll be a better sequel.

Insane, OTT, corny at times. But sometimes that's exactly what you want from a movie. A superhero movie without the superpowers. Ryan Gosling is fantastic as the haunted action hero. Yes, it's ridiculous and clichéd, but it's also a lot of fun. If you like John Wick you'll like this.

I really don't understand the negative reviews here. Most action movies are not designed to be cinematographic masterpieces but among all the action flicks that are coming out left and right these days, I found The Gray Man to be one of the better ones. It's very well paced and never feels like a 2hr long movie. Yes the acting is a bit uneven from the supporting cast but the main roles are doing a great job. Overall very enjoyable and entertaining.

The Gray Man is an awesome action flick filled with beastly action scenes with flair and style. We see all types of action but the fight scenes are what stand out the most. They are high speed with lots of cuts, frantic and hectic. This is not how I would normally describe good fight scenes, but it somehow works here. You can follow it all. The fight scenes are fantastic.

At the same time, I really don't understand why this wasn't rated R. This is the exact type of movie that should be. I think it would have stepped up a level if it was allowed to show all the blood and didn't need to shy away from showing the stabs/shots. They did a good job of hiding it without being too obvious. But it would have had significantly more impact if they didn't hold back. My jaw could have dropped a bunch of times. And the usual reason for limiting it to PG-13 is theatrical box office. But this is a Netflix movie with a very limited theatrical release one week early. Very odd decision.

The story is more than serviceable. Not everything works and there's a lot that isn't fleshed out. But I was never bored in any of the non-action parts. I was fully invested in the story/characters even though it's far from the movie's best attribute.

There are a bunch of great lines of dialogue and some really good callbacks. I like the villain but I don't feel like the script gave him enough to fully encapsulate what they were going for. He has a little Caster Troy to him, but isn't nearly as memorable.

Why isn't Jessica Henwick in more stuff? She's always awesome. Although I wish she had more to do here.

If you're an action junkie like me, you will likely have a blast with this movie. It's worth seeing in theaters unless you have a great sound system. Trust me, you want it LOUD. (1 viewing, 7/18/2022)

The plot is unoriginal, the characters lack depth, and the dialogue is often cheesy.... However the pace, locations and action make this a really enjoyable couple of hours. If you leave any high-brow expectations at the theatre entrance it's really worth watching.

As I said it took at least 9 hrs for normal car to drive from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and Tuk tuk can goes only 45-50 mph. Come on man they have Audi in Thailand too !!!! Lol.

Two solid hours of efficient Netflix content is what's on offer here, the action-thriller equivalent of emptiness with nothing but cliche thrillers and mediocre action.

The Gray Man is mostly a collection of tired spy tropes, directed in a muddled and baffling way, that seemingly exists to set up what seems like will be a fairly unimaginative franchise.

The dialogues were cringe and didn't excite at all. The only grace was seeing Ryan Gosling on screen. A big budget film with neither strong screenplay nor efficient set up, The Gray Man feels like a sunk ship with lots of efforts vanishing in vain.

Aside from two hand-to-hand combat scenes, the fights are a dimly-lit mess of quick cuts and bullets flying, something similar to what Michael Bay has done all over these years.

Being a big budget film, The Gray Man is a disappointment to a greater extent, considering that the project had A List actors, but a poor storyline.

My Rating: 5/10.

I don't really get all the haters of this movie, because I don't think it's bad at all. For myself, I bought Gosling as the stoneface with quick remarks and found it enjoyable. It's not a deep story and you could argue that the characters are cliche, but even if they are, I think it works in this movie. The action scenes are decent, but not top of the line. It's a good vs bad classic, very basic, with characters easy to read. Chris Evans is convincing as the role of the psychopath. The child actor does a great job as well. Billy Bob Thornton is also quite decent. So even if the story is a simple one, I found it quite enjoyable.

THE GRAY MAN is apparently Netflix's most expensive film to date, which is a surprise as it's really average at best. It feels like a blown-up BOURNE copy, with CIA agents tracking down renegade Ryan Gosling around the world. Chris Hemsworth's EXTRACTION was more realistic and considerably better than this one. The globetrotting is pointless - no culture, just a few buildings - and the choreography surprisingly bad at times. The characterisation is nil and de Ames quite bad in a peripheral role. The only part I did like was the extended Prague set-piece, which is where the money is up on screen and the scale looks amazing; the rest is distinctly so-so.

Another Jason Bourne copycat and a really mediocre one at that. Why is it mediocre? Because of a mediocre SILLY story and lots of mediocre supporting actors, who usually only star in tv series.

Another Netflix movie which has got that typical cheapish formulaic Netflix smell.

No surprises here. No real drama or suspense either. Everything is going through the motions of making yet another mediocre, predictable, tedious action movie.

Not any good then? Some of the action scenes are quite good though, but some are really laughably stupid, with Ryan Gosling surviving rocketlaunchers and tank attacks. How silly can it get!?

The story: Ryan Gosling does a Jason Bourne copycat. He is a gun for hire and a secret goverment agency is trying to kill him. Will he survive? Duh!