Netflix's 'The Gray Man' hits every action trope

“The Gray Man” is the most expensive movie streaming giant Netflix has ever made. It features a budget of $200 million, directors who worked on the Avengers movies, and a cast of stars including Ryan Gosling, Sudbury native Chris Evans, Billy Bob Thornton and Ana de Armas. Netflix has already ordered a sequel and a spinoff, hoping to turn this into a cinematic universe rivaling Marvel’s or James Bond’s. But is it worth watching? GBH's arts and culture reporter James Bennett II spoke with Morning Edition hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel. This transcript has been lightly edited.

Paris Alston: I've seen the trailer, but I'm still not clear on this. What is the plot for "The Gray Man" at its core?

James Bennett II: I think it can really be shrunk down into two sentences. Ryan Gosling plays this guy in prison — his codename is Six — who gets out of prison on the condition that he becomes a hitman, a disposable asset, if you will, for the CIA. The CIA, though, is corrupt. And so Six is caught in this web of conspiracy and corruption that takes him straight to the top, all while being pursued by Boston's own Chris Evans.

Jeremy Siegel: This is a movie with an all-star cast. You mentioned Chris Evans, Boston's own. Ryan Gosling, obviously huge. He'll be playing Ken in the Barbie movie. I also watched this movie last night. We mentioned that the critical reception is gray at best. It's sort of in the middle there, I agree with [that]. It was just right down the middle for me. What do you think? Is it a good or is it a bad movie?

Bennett: It's a movie. It's an action movie, and it's one of those films where the critical reception is kind of meh, but audiences seem to like it enough, at least as far as Rotten Tomatoes goes. It's also a movie that seems a little bit out of time. This is a flick that looks like it could have fit in that era with things like "Taken" or the TV show "24," or any of those really big action blockbusters that would have used stand-in Asian terrorists in the same way that early '90s or '80s movies would have just used Cold War Russian villains. But now the U.S. government is the bad guy. Is this a reflection of where we're at?

Alston: Is that a social statement?

Bennett: Yeah. It's like "Are we out of just random general baddies to use?" And so we just got to use ourselves at this point. But if you like it, you like it.

Siegel: Watching it, I got the sense that this is sort of an original story, right? It's based off of a book. So it feels like at least we're getting something new here from Netflix. But then at the same time, it has that same sort of feel as superhero movies. It's written by two people who have written superhero movies before.

Bennett: Yeah, it's the Russo brothers, and they did "Captain America: Civil War" and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." They also did "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame," those last two Avengers movies. So they have some experience in assembling these all-star casts, working with them and putting on a big blow-up kind of show. But I was watching this movie and I was thinking 'would this film ever be shown in a film studies class about action movie tropes?' It's like you have every single one. You have the gritty guy who turns out to have a heart of gold and is recruited by a shadowy organization to be a hit man, who figures out that the good guys are really the bad guys. It's an action movie, kind of in a Bond vein, where they just take you to all these different locations around the world, whether it's like Chiang Mai, Thailand or Dubrovnik, Croatia, or Langley, Virginia — or London, Berlin, Vienna. They're all over the map in this. It's trying to hit every single check mark for what goes in an action movie.

Alston: I feel like I watched too many action movies during the pandemic, and now I'm kind of over them. But is there any part of it that stuck out to you is really emulating that high-budget action feel?

Bennett: There's a scene that takes place — they shot in Prague, I believe — it cost $40 million to make out of a $200 million budget. It is one of the most over-the-top action sequences I've seen in a long time. And as I was straining the limits of my suspension of disbelief, Jessica Henwick's character, a CIA boss named Suzanne Brewer, tells Chris Evans' character, this mercenary CIA ex-rogue guy, to call off this manhunt. And Evans responds, "Extra $10 million to the first guy to put a bullet in this Ken doll's brain."

When that happened, I was like 'this is too much.' And then they start to pull it back. But this goes back to the Russo brothers' experience — they can bring a little bit of levity to it. And they give Ryan Gosling some room to have a little bit of fun with the dialog and try to get some comedy points in. And there's a little bit of self-awareness that comes to these tropes as well.

Alston: So there's some action, there's comedy, there's maybe some romantic tension there. What exactly is Netflix trying to do here? As we mentioned, despite those mixed reviews, they're pushing ahead with the sequel.

Bennett: They've ordered a sequel. They they're doing a spinoff. This is based off of a book. they have some material to work with. They want effectively, I think, to have a property that makes people want to subscribe to Netflix. They're down $200 billion over the year and 1.3 million subscribers. They really need a tentpole franchise that keeps people invested in the Netflix brand. And so they're just kind of trying to create a cinematic universe in the vein of, let's say, a Marvel or a character franchise like James Bond 007, out of whole cloth. Which is kind of weird to me because Bond had at least a decade of books to go off of, and a presidential endorsement! JFK famously said one of his favorite books is a Bond book, and everyone loved it. Marvel had half a century of comic lore to pull from. And this just seems like, okay, if they could do it, we can do it, too. And this is Netflix just throwing money and seeing what sticks.