Although Ryan Gosling’s intent these days might be to embody the phrase “basic as fuck”—based purely on portraying the ultimate Barbie accessory known as Ken—even The Gray Man is a little too generic in every possible way that a spy movie can be (but maybe that’s on the source material’s author, Mark Greaney, more than anyone else). And Gosling himself has stated amid the media blitzkrieg for the film that it was really action movies that got him thinking, “Making movies is what I want to do.” So here we have an action-comedy-spy movie all rolled into one, just so every person involved can hedge their bets and ensure they get a return on their investment. Especially Netflix, more uppity than ever about delivering “the right content.”
And said “right content” (and ripoff content) starts with the fact that Ana de Armas is a co-star (Bond enthusiasts will also remember she showed up in No Time to Die). The nods to Bond don’t stop there—for the Russo brothers, Anthony and Joe, want the audience to feel as smug as Gosling looks for “spotting the differences” between this film and “Bondian flavors” that are present in, obviously, Bond films and “other” spy movies constantly influenced by them.
One key difference, of course, is that Gosling goes by “Six” not 007. That’s short for “Sierra Six,” for he’s part of a “gray man department,” if you will, called the Sierra program. Recruited by a senior CIA agent named Donald Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton, in a rare non-shithead role), this aspect has all the elements of Bond (Daniel Craig) searching for a parental figure in M (Judi Dench) and finding that a “noble” higher-up within some covert affairs agency will do just fine. And Fitzroy is certainly preferable to Six’s real father—the very man who caused him to end up in prison for murder in the first place. A loss for Six, and a boon for Fitzroy, who trains his protégé to be a fighting/killing machine. This is a talent the “on-the-grid” members of the CIA can’t help but notice, in addition to Six’s overall prowess. Enough to recruit him for a job in Bangkok that turns out to have far more to it that meets the eye.
At first, however, it all seems to be going according to plan as Six works in conjunction with “legitimate” agent Dani Miranda (de Armas, no stranger to working with Chris Evans either after Knives Out). This doesn’t last long for, like every spy with a heart of gold but a chip on his shoulder, Six offers some quality of “goodness” the audience can’t ignore. And it materializes on this mission when he refuses to take the hit on his target because it will harm “collateral” civilians, including a child. Still getting the job done, he wounds the target in a more, shall we say, visible manner before cornering him in an alley and learning that his true identity is Four a.k.a. another Sierra program survivor.
As Four dies from Six’s maiming, he hands over a drive and warns him about Denny Carmichael (Regé-Jean “Simon Basset” Page), the high-level official who orchestrated the mission. Tending to trust a fellow Sierra over the CIA, Six refuses to get on the plane with Carmichael’s crew so he can leave Bangkok. Aware that refusing Denny’s sudden demand for an “asset” no one else was told about will make him persona non grata (even more so than usual), he turns to Fitzroy for a new extraction plan. Unfortunately, Denny has a “gray man,” after a fashion, of his own in mind: Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans)—no relation to Evan. Known for the sociopathic tendencies that got him kicked out of the CIA, Denny sees him as the perfect tool to wield against someone else who has no actual rules to abide by, with both men operating “privately,” outside the system. The difference, of course, being that Hansen takes no issue with causing carnage and mayhem with use of his “powers”—ultimately being merely to torture and destroy. Indeed, among The Gray Man’s most memorable action moments (of which Gosling boasts there are nine) is the destruction of former Sierra program handler Margaret Cahill’s (Alfre Woodard, who should appear way more in this, by the way) apartment in Prague, followed by, well, most of Prague itself as Hansen is given free rein by Denny to send the goon squad of mercenaries out in full force, complete with gunfire and explosives that make no discrimination when it comes to harming civilians. This, as we’ve seen, being Six’s greatest pet peeve.
Handcuffed to a bench, he, quelle surprise, manages to escape by the sheer strength of his manliness (just another word for “inexplicable craftiness,” as MacGyver taught us). Because, yes, that is forever the spy movie trope, no matter how “sensitive” someone like Gosling is meant to be. No matter how “woke” (but still white) Hollywood tries to make its leading male characters in action and spy-oriented genres. Then there is the always anticipated “banter” that develops between a male and female spy in these types of films, inevitably destined to turn into something romantique. This would infer Six and Dani, but perhaps even worse than going that cliched direction, the Russo brothers opt to give Six his emotional redemption through Fitzroy’s niece, Claire (Julia Butters).
Through the old flashback technique, we see that Six is no stranger to giving a damn about this little girl with a heart condition (for added laying-it-on-thickness measure). Indeed, she’s the only one who has ever managed to penetrate his “steely exterior” (no innuendo intended). One that every spy must have in order to 1) cope with his requisite childhood PTSD and 2) kill without thinking too heavily/existentially about it. It also helps that the two share a special song together: Mark Lindsay’s “Silver Bird”—a title that’s sort of like a synonym for Gray Man. So maybe that’s why she “inexplicably” likes it, for being a preteen listening to an obscure “golden oldie” can have no other meaning, n’est-ce pas?
With Six’s emotional growth contingent upon being a father figure to the little girl (it’s all very Léon: The Professional) instead of boyfriend material for Dani, it quickly becomes clear what needs to happen to Fitzroy. Just as a similar fate needed to befall M in order for Bond to “transcend” emotionally. As for someone as two-dimensionally villainous as Hansen (even Lyutsifer Safin [Rami Malek] had more to offer on backstory), his fate can only be: death. In the classic battle between “good” and “evil” (as though there are no gray [man] areas in between) that every spy movie is founded upon, the latter must be punished in this way for “order” to be restored. That’s why Americans did so love their spy movies during the Cold War. And it’s no coincidence that the genre is starting to have a bit of a resurgence now, during this era of a new unspoken (yet loud and clear) war between the U.S. and Russia.
What’s more, can any cliche spy movie be called as much without ultra-cheeseball facial hair? To that point, Gosling’s go-to joke in promo interviews for The Gray Man was, “[Chris’] mustache went to the Stella Adler school and my goatee was Meisner.” Ha-ha. Sounds like a joke better suited to the vibe of The Last Movie Stars (wherein the likes of Elia Kazan is treated as someone still relevant to the modern public). But anyway, it’s just another way the two are trying their best attempt at some Nicolas Care/John Travolta shit in Face/Off. Even one of the more generic movie posters for The Gray Man features Gosling facing away from Evans as the two look faux “intensely” off into the distance at nothing in particular. A description that might as well be used to delineate what it’s like to watch The Gray Man in terms of how it stacks up just as generically against many other spy films.
