The Gray Man
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The Gray Man is a 2022 American action thriller film directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, from a screenplay the latter co-wrote with Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, based on the 2009 novel of the same name by Mark Greaney. The film stars Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick, Regé-Jean Page, Wagner Moura, Julia Butters, Dhanush, Alfre Woodard, and Billy Bob Thornton. Produced by the Russo brothers' company, AGBO, it is the first film in a franchise based upon Greaney's Gray Man novels. The film focuses on the CIA agent “Sierra Six”, who is on the run from sociopathic ex-CIA agent and mercenary Lloyd Hansen upon discovering corrupt secrets about his superior.
Plot
In 2003, senior CIA official Donald Fitzroy visits a prisoner named Courtland Gentry in Florida. Eight years earlier, Courtland was a minor convicted of killing his abusive father to protect his brother. Fitzroy offers him his freedom in exchange for working as an assassin in the CIA's Sierra program, an elite black ops unit, which will allow him to exist in the gray.
In 2021, Courtland, now known as Sierra Six, is working with fellow CIA agent Dani Miranda to assassinate a target named Dining Car suspected of selling off national security secrets in Bangkok during the national Songkran festival. Unable to do so stealthily without harming civilians, he attacks Dining Car directly, mortally wounding him. Before dying, he reveals he was also in the Sierra program as Sierra Four. He hands Six an encrypted drive detailing the corruption of CIA official Denny Carmichael, the lead agent on the assassination mission.
Carmichael is elusive about the true purpose of the mission and the contents of the drive when confronted by Six, and Six refuses evacuation from Bangkok with Carmichael's men. Sending the drive to former Sierra Program handler Margaret Cahill in Prague, he calls a now-retired Fitzroy to request extraction.
Carmichael hires mercenary Lloyd Hansen, a former CIA agent kicked out for his sociopathic tendencies, to track down Six and retrieve the drive. Hansen does so by kidnapping Fitzroy's niece Claire, forcing Fitzroy to authorize Six's murder by the extraction team. However, Six kills them and escapes.
Frustrated, Carmichael sends his subordinate Suzanne Brewer to oversee Hansen and keep him in line. Hansen keeps Claire hostage in a mansion in Croatia, at his base of operations. He also puts a massive bounty on Six's head to get mercenaries and assassins to hunt him down.
Six heads to Vienna to find the serial number of Claire's pacemaker from Laszlo Sosa, but he betrays him for the bounty. Six escapes from Sosa's entrapment just as Hansen arrives with his team (and Hansen kills Sosa), while Six kills all of Hansen's teammates and is rescued by Miranda from Hansen. Her reputation is shot thanks to the Bangkok mission and she initially plans to bring him in to salvage her CIA career.
Six convinces her to drive him to Cahill's apartment in Prague, where she decrypts the drive. It reveals the extent of Carmichael's corruption on behalf of a mysterious benefactor working for a shadow government. Hansen sends several teams of assassins to Cahill, and a terminally ill Cahill blows up her home, so Six and Miranda can escape.
Six is arrested and handcuffed in the square. A massive shootout in Prague resulted in all the police officers present slaughtered and Six escaped on a tram. After a long chase and gun battle, Six is once again saved by Miranda, in Cahill's bulletproof car. They infiltrate a hospital to track down Claire through her pacemaker's wireless signal.
Subsequently, an Indian-Tamil mercenary, code-named "Lone Wolf", hired by Hansen, tracks and overcomes Six and Miranda, retrieves the drive, and then brings it to Hansen for the offered bounty. Six and Miranda follow the pacemaker to Hansen's base. She creates a distraction while he infiltrates the mansion rescuing Fitzroy and Claire. Mortally wounded as they flee, Fitzroy sacrifices himself attempting to kill Hansen. Miranda manages to reclaim the drive after Lone Wolf, disgusted by Hansen's sociopathy and amoral tendencies, surrenders the drive to her before leaving.
Hansen takes Claire hostage and drags her into a hedge maze. After a standoff, he lets go of Claire and fights with Six. Before Six can kill him, Brewer shoots Hansen. She then tells Six that she plans to pin Carmichael's actions on Hansen to gain leverage over him. Furthermore, Brewer pledges for Claire's safety, but only if Six continues to work for the CIA.
Six and Miranda are forced to cooperate in the cover-up, where ultimately no action is taken against Carmichael. After the debriefing at the CIA headquarters, Miranda threatens to kill Carmichael if any harm comes to Claire. Six escapes custody and frees Claire, who was being held at a secret location, and escapes.
Why It's a Silver Bird
- One of biggest while it focuses on action thriller film genre like Avengers: Infinity War & Avengers: Endgame, they deceived to focus on different genres, like action film, for Anthony and Joe Russo.
- It has incredibly great live-action, even for a Netflix movie. It's very stylistic in the way that the characters move and how the backgrounds and visual effects look.
- It is based on the 2009 novel of the same name by Mark Greaney.
- The action scene or fight are really nice.
- Catchy theme songs and soundtracks. especially The Gray Man.
- The ending in the movie are good.
- It really nice. The film focuses on the CIA agent “Sierra Six”, who is on the run from sociopathic ex-CIA agent and mercenary Lloyd Hansen upon discovering corrupt secrets about his superior.
- The visual effects are really good.
- Great acting, such: Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick, Regé-Jean Page, Wagner Moura, Julia Butters, Dhanush, Alfre Woodard, Billy Bob Thornton.
The Only Bad Quality
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 45% of 276 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "The Gray Man has the star-studded outline of an entertaining action thriller, but it's filled in with lukewarm leftovers from far better films." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 49 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.