John Patrick’s Review: The Gray Man
So, for some reason, I need to get psyched up to pull something off of a streaming service and dedicate two + hours to sitting there and watch. Which is interesting, because I will, without hesitation, watch an episode of a streaming service series, say “The Old Man” and think nothing of watching two or three in a row. Same time. Feels like less of a commitment. I didn’t say it made sense. So I was set Saturday to settle in for The Gray Man.
I say all of that to say, I was ready to dedicate the better part of a Saturday evening to what is apparently one of the “hotter” movies on NETFLIX, The Gray Man.
BERLIN, GERMANY – JULY 18: Ana de Armas, Ryan Gosling, Regé-Jean Page and Chris Evans attend the “The Gray Man” Netflix Special Screening at Zoopalast on July 18, 2022 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Gerald Matzka/Getty Images for Netflix)
The movie stars, Ryan Gosling, whom I like. Chris Evans, whom I really enjoyed as Captain America and Ana de Armas, she had a very brief but impactful role in the last James Bond movie “No Time To Die”.
So, about the movie. I learned a long time ago, that things being “good” or “bad” is very subjective. What’s “good” to me, might be “very bad” to you, and so forth. So, these days I leave with “did I like it”, did I “not like it”.
The Gray Man for me, couldn’t make up it’s mind as to what kind of movie it wanted to be when it grew up. It’s violent, I have NO problem with that. At times it seems very serious, and yet, at times silly. The silly didn’t seem to fit. A friend of mine referred to it as “cartoonish”. That’s fair.
Now, back to the “did I like it” or “did I not like it”. I did enjoy it, but I wish I had known what I was in for. I was set for a thriller, eh…I don’t know that it was really that.
Here’s a thought I couldn’t shake. Did you see the NETFLIX offering from a few months ago, “Red Notice”, with Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gil Gadot?. The Gray Man kept reminding me of that movie. Two male leads and a female. It almost felt like they sat in a big room at NETFLIX and said, “ok, how can we do another movie, just like that, but different, with different actors”. That’s The Gray Man.
It’s a little over two hours long.
