Review of The Gray Man (2022) by Ammaaya — 15 Jul 2022

First off, I want to preface that Dhanush is innocent. He was taken hostage by cinematic terrorists! He is not to blame! (And frankly incredibly underutilized like so many).

Anyways, two of the most inexplicably praised Hollywood acts worked on this movie, and unfortunately they did not step up their craft enough to make this a watchable movie. Putting aside Chris Evans' usual "acting" choices— with him, it's either pretending to be a wooden plank or wishing that he did pretend to be a wooden plank —the Russo brothers return once again with another boatload of money to make another movie that begs the question: why they are still being funded? This movie is just a shower of the most generic action movie tropes that goes to show that these directors ironically have little direction to go in and little artistic vision beyond simply checking off a list of scenes and plot points in the least entertaining and least emotional way possible.

And it is very hilarious how the Russos called back on The Winter Soldier as their name drop for what this movie is supposed to feel like, because all they showed is that they have no clue WHY people enjoyed that movie and regarded it as the MCU's best until it was forgotten by the churn of Content. The emotional heart and depth of that movie and the political intrigue and commentary were what made that movie great, but— and this is already obvious with how they talk about it in interviews —the Russos misunderstood both of these and have a very different idea of what made that movie: loud booms and generic gray colorgrades of cityscapes with a generic action movie score and the occasional one-liner zing here and there. Honestly, to call this a "spy thriller" even seems like a stretch, since the Russos just tick off the boxes of the genre in the most uninspired way possible, almost as if this movie was generated by an AI.