The Gray Man Review

Netflix reportedly spent two hundred million dollars on this, and the money is hard to find anywhere on screen. The centerpiece has Ryan Gosling handcuffed to a bench in a European square while gunmen converge and a tram bears down, and the sequence cuts so often, from so many angles, that the geography turns to soup. Stephen Windon lights Vienna, Bangkok and Croatia in the same teal and amber wash, so the whole chase arrives as one continuous airport lounge. Gosling underplays Sierra Six nearly to the point of absence, which might have worked against a sharper script, and the quips he is handed land nowhere.

Chris Evans is the only person here having a good time. He wears the mustache like a dare and plays Lloyd Hansen as a preppy sadist who is funny about hurting people, and the film wakes up whenever he walks into a room. Ana de Armas has better hands than the coverage lets you see. The Russos can still stage a fight when they slow down, as the fireworks brawl in Bangkok shows, but almost nothing else here is slowed down, and a hedge maze standoff finishes the story on the least interesting idea it has.