A $200 million spy action movie starring Ryan Gosling has premiered on Netflix - is it worth a watch?

Frame: the film "The Gray Man"

The Grey Man: starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans in the lead roles, the spy action film was released on Netflix to become one of the streaming service's most expensive original film projects. "Lenta.ru" tells how this film, clearly intended to launch a franchise to rival Bond, turned out.

A man in a gray suit named Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) walks into the cell of an unnamed hero (Ryan Gosling) and bluntly offers him a job with the CIA. Duties include not asking questions and solving the most difficult and controversial operational problems. The unit is called "Sierra" and its employees are hopelessly stripped of their identities and given serial numbers in return.

Eighteen years later, the visibly obese hero routinely answers the call of the Sixth. During another mission, Sextus discovers that he has been ordered to kill a colleague, Quarto (Callan Mulvey). The mortally wounded victim manages to open his killer's eyes and hands him a flash drive containing dirty information about his current CIA boss, Danny Carmichael (Raget-Jean Page). Once Six is on the run, Carmichael sends the maniac Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) after him. The first thing he does is to take pensioner Fitzroy and his niece (Julia Butters) hostage. This is, of course, as they say in a completely different film, a big mistake.

One wants to talk about the films of brothers Anthony and Joseph Russo through the associative chains that arise at the mention of their creative union. Not only and not so much the eponymous actress Renee, but especially the related tandems of the past and present come to mind. There are the great comedians of the absurd, the Marx Brothers (though there were five at the time), Netflix rivals the Duffer Brothers, the makers of Dumb and Dumber, the Farrelly Brothers, and of course the Mario Brothers, perhaps the world's most famous plumbers. Interestingly, the characteristics of all these great predecessors are also found in Anthony and Joseph's films. The Farrellys would not have missed fat Thor in the latest installment of The Avengers (nor would the Marks), the sequel to The First Avenger (The Other War began their collaboration with Marvel) was built around Cold War nostalgia-just like the Duffer's Stranger Things. Although Mario Russo's vision of cinema as a more or less linear computer game, in which a strong character is more important than a complex one or, say, a compelling story, it has something in common with Superbrothers.

Frame: the film "The Gray Man"

These were the principles on which his Marvel films were based. The cartoony, absurdist exploits of a dozen central characters ended up guaranteeing box office receipts, even when the last chapter of The Avengers collapsed under its own weight. After that epic ended, the Russos logically decided to show what they could do beyond the influence of Kevin Feigy's production, and began streaming. Their first experience was the Apple TV+ produced film On the Slope, a New Hollywood inspired drama starring Tom Holland. After declaring their love for Scorsese (Marvel's biggest adversary) and Kubrick (especially Fullmetal Cladding), they turned to Netflix and sold the omnivorous service their idea of a fantastic action spy film. Gray Man is also the one that is easiest to talk about by association.

This film is a cross between the Bond films, the Jason Bourne adventures and the latest installments of the Mission Impossible franchise with its hilarious cartoonishness.

Ryan Gosling's guttural face is, of course, a separate top ten hit. The carefree half-smile left on his face after his role in Drive allows him to fake anything. Depending on the light and angle, the same facial expression flickers into Matt Damon and then into Tom Cruise. Gosling is in fine form and looks believable in numerous action scenes, but he also carries a reliably tattooed melancholy signature. This paint allows him to win hearts and generally look like a living human being even in the most inhuman of genre schemes. At one point, however, he is called "Handsome Ken," but this is probably an inside joke about the upcoming Barbie movie, in which Ryan has just played the doll's boyfriend.

The film's quirkiness and thrills are provided by Chris Evans and Billy Bob Thornton. Evans, like Russo, tries to escape his Marvel legacy in any way he can. Unlike the directors, he succeeds, it must be said, much better. The Freddie Mercury mustache, the slightly crazy look. it is clear that the actor has gone out of his way to transfer for two hours the image of a hilarious maniac, which Gosling's fans will find amusing and a little disturbing.

Frame: the film "The Gray Man"

Another important man is Stephen F. Windon: the cameraman behind the camera for seven (!) Fast and Furious films. Thanks to him, after two hours of gunfire and roars, the exceptional Prague chase involving police, riot police and a streetcar remains in the memory. Otherwise, although the action takes place in five different countries, the virtual tourism that became popular during the pandemic is shot mostly with very fast drones. It is unfortunate that fighting is not Windon's strong point. The few fight scenes are clearly spectacularly conceived, but one would have to call in someone like Steven Soderbergh to make them work.

At the plot level, intrigue building has never been Russo's strong point. "The Gray Man" is assembled with the aforementioned elements, taken at random: a twisted secret service, a difficult childhood, pulled fingernails, a pair of beauties in the fifth scene.... The film does not prove at all painful, and while the streetcar is running, it feels like watching an imaginary "Atomic Blond." At the end credits, however, one gets the feeling that the two hours on screen are not the film itself, but an expensive adaptation of a tag cloud. The genre is peculiar, although in the age of excessive postmodernism it is quite popular. For those who are counting down to the release of the new Mission, it will suffice.