The Gray Man recently dropped on Netflix; a fairly, nonstop action film based on the book series by Mark Greaney. Ryan Gosling plays the title character, The Gray Man a.k.a Sierra Six. I’ve already watched it twice. I cannot remember the last movie that I watched the entire way through and then simply hit “play” again. It was so well done that I could probably watch it a third time tonight instead of writing this, and I’d likely enjoy it as much.
I don’t often review movies; mostly because I am generally able to find something about most movies that I enjoy far more than I am able to overall dislike, however, I am critical about both the direction and the script more than any other one (or two) aspect(s) of a movie. Acting is a moot point, in part because even poor actors today give a better performance then some of the best thirty years ago, even actors such as Tom Cruise are giving better performances now than they were twenty years, thirty years ago. And, beside Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Billy Bob Thornton, and Julia Butters most of the acting was pretty subpar, still this movie was overall one of the best action films and book adaptations that I have seen in quite some time.
If you have Netflix, you’ve probably seen the movie by now, still one of the shortcomings to living in our society today is that many critics—a synonym now for anyone with a television and a smartphone—don’t know how to positively review a movie, people tend only to speak up to trash something, especially since they think that will spark some viral outcry. If you’re the first to defame someone or something than you’ll forever have to remind people that it was you that Cancelled…whomever, whatever. It was YOU that made COVID relevant again, it was YOU that succeeded in terrifying hundreds of thousands of people about Monkey Pox, it was YOU that wasted everyone’s time and contributed to the problems now buried deep in some unrecognizable corner of our devolving society.
The Gray Man, is a great action movie and I suggest that you find a way to watch it with no alternative motive except of course to simply enjoy it because, if you can do that, it would not have been a waste.