The Gray Man: short on grey matter

If you’re looking for someone to serve up your mindless mega-action summer blockbuster – as Netflix executives evidently were – who better than Anthony and Joe Russo? Having treated us to a quartet of Marvel superhero crashfests – two Captain America movies (The Winter Soldier, 2014; Civil War, 2016) and two Avengers offerings (Infinity War, 2018; Endgame, 2019), the Russos have now come up with what feels like a Jason Bourne adventure with its brain cells removed. Plot logic? Subtlety? Depth of characterisation? Who needs ‘em? Bring on the carnage!

The Gray Man features a good bad guy – Ryan Gosling, a long, long way from La La Land (2016), as ‘Sierra Six’, undercover operative of a subterranean killer offshoot of the CIA. He’s facing up against a bad bad guy – a sneery, moustachioed Chris Evans, clearly relishing playing nasty after his clean-cut Captain America roles, as Lloyd Hansen, a murderous ex-CIA freelancer with zero scruples. Six was recruited – as we see in flashback – by Don Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) to join the Sierra outfit midway through a 30-year jail sentence for murdering his abusive father at age 15. Meanwhile, Hansen has been called in by present-day CIA honcho Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean Page, so far best known for playing the Duke of Hastings in Bridgerton) to eliminate the Sierra line-up, for they know his guilty secrets. (Which is more than we ever do; all we’re told is that “someone very powerful” is “pulling the strings”.)

With a couple of under-characterised female support roles – Ana de Armas as Dani Miranda, valiantly backing up Six, and Jessica Henwick as Suzanne Brewer, increasingly mistrustful of her boss Denny – the action bounces energetically around the globe, from Monaco to Thailand to Turkey to London to Vienna to Croatia. The action centrepiece is a ten-minute sequence of wildly over-the-top mayhem in the centre of Prague, where Six and the Czech police are confronted by Hansen’s heavily armed hit squads, replete with massive shields and automatic weapons; car crashes, demolitions and explosions abound, along with what looks like the demise of a sizeable percentage of the capital’s citizens.

A similar bout of gory slaughter comes towards the end of the film, this time set in a baroque castle in Croatia – but not before a cursory attempt to humanise our anti-hero, with his avuncular concern for Fitzroy’s pre-teen daughter, taken as hostage by Hansen. It feels like window-dressing. For the rest of the time, anyone prepared to switch off their critical faculties and relax can be promised two hours of slickly put-together, undemanding entertainment.

► The Gray Man is available to view on Netflix now.