The Gray Man

_The Gray Man_ has some impressive action sequences, but is such a lackluster film experience overall. Most of the action is bogged down by sloppy editing where a complete absence of proper lighting ruins whatever positives the film had going for it. The talented cast does what they can with their roles, but it’s not enough to make the film entertaining. Ana de Armas is mostly forgettable apart from shooting tranquilizer darts in guy’s butts and firing a rocket launcher a few times. Tedious and sluggish with punches and kicks and kills that barely satisfy, _The Gray Man_ is a dead on arrival action thriller that squanders potential almost as often as Ryan Gosling chews gum. **Full Review:** https://hubpages.com/entertainment/The-Gray-Man-2022-The-Yawn-Ultimatum

MORE SPOILER-FREE REVIEWS @ https://www.msbreviews.com/ "The Gray Man holds the energetic, over-the-top, explosive action from the Russo Brothers, which should be enough to entertain the vast majority of the audience throughout the admittedly generic, predictable screenplay. Excessive camera movement occasionally sabotages the fantastic fight choreography, but nothing that lasts too long. Regardless of the valuable technical aspects, the success of this movie is inherently connected to the superb performances from a cast packed with chemistry. Ryan Gosling demonstrates that he knows how to play an action protagonist, Chris Evans clearly has tons of fun playing a "bad guy" full of personality, Ana de Armas captivates as the sidekick badass, while Jessica Henwick is underused - the actress has done more than enough in her career to portray bigger roles. See it in the theater, if possible." Rating: B

Well at least this latest Netflix effort gives us some eye candy in the form of the annoyingly ageless Ryan Gosling and a slightly hammy Chris Evans, but the rest of it is derivative even by their standards. We start with a young man being released from prison by "Fitzroy" (Tommy Lee Jones) so he can join an elite CIA hit squad. Named "Six" (Gosling), his first mission is straight out of the "Mechanic" (2011) only it's an erstwhile colleague that he is sent to eradicate. A task that proves remarkably simple but is accomplished not before, luckily for us, he is given a micro chip that illustrates his new boss "Carmichael" (an underwhelming Regé-Jean Page) is about as crooked as the day is long. There now ensues a series of long "John Wick" style combat scenes as try as this hugely well equipped CIA operation does, it simply cannot capture "Six". Desperate times call for desperate measures so "Hansen" (Evans) is drafted in to finally do the business by kidnapping the easily accessible niece of the now retired TLJ, and using her as leverage he tries a different tack. Wholesale slaughter follows and along the way some lovely buildings in Prague and Croatia become neat piles of rubble; the local citizens are dropping like flies sending those in the CIA PR department into spasms... Well you get the gist. The always over-rated Ana de Armas sports quite a colourful suit at the start, but as usual her contributions are pretty unimpressive; TLJ is nowhere near his best and the thing lurches on towards a really inevitable conclusion that stretched out the thinnest of plots and showed a really disconcerting image of a CIA completely out of control, running rampage - and that scenario isn't remotely plausible. There is plenty of car-chasing, gunfights and pyrotechnic displays but that's nowhere near enough to compensate for a pretty unremarkable script and an amalgam of stories we have seen done better elsewhere, many times before. That said, if you get a chance to see it during it's limited cinema run then I'd give it a go. On television this is just subscription fodder with A-list cows that you will instantly forget.