Film Review - The Gray Man (2022)

 The Gray Man is a Netflix film directed by the Russo Brothers and a script by Joe Russo as well as a their Avengers writers Markus and McFeely and is based off of a novel and stars Ryan Gosling as Sierra Six which is part of a secret squad that exists in what is known as the Grey of the CIA but when his old mentor (Billy Bob Thornton) is kidnapped by a psychotic killer (Chris Evans) Six must come to his rescue while also finding a top secret hard drive and fending off plenty of assassins who want him dead.

 

The Gray Man is sadly a big big disappointment for me but before I delve into that I want to delve into the main thing I enjoyed in this movie and that is Ana De Armas who proved in No Time to Die last year that she could be a great action heroine and this time she does so once again and firstly she wears this amazing suit in her first scene that looks gorgeous and then she becomes a vital ally for Six in his mission and proves to be resourceful, able to kick bottom as well as be vulnerable and likeable as a heroine and it really adds a lot to this movie for me.

 

But outside of her this movie was a real letdown and it stung a little bit for me given that this was the team, the group of people that made those last 2 Avengers movies in Infinity War and Endgame that I really enjoyed and could’ve made for a great end to the MCU on the whole even though that was never going to happen but why did it disappoint well here is why.

 

- Firstly, the storytelling here is very unimaginative, most of it feels like there are very little stakes apart from a rescue mission and when you’ve had a movie or 2 to build up this relationship between Six and his mentor or Six having some adventures where he fought bad guys and saved the day as well as the world then this would’ve landed better for me but this time it didn’t.

 

And when you think about the James Bond or John Wick or Mission Impossible movies which this movie so desperately wants to be it just falls very very short in comparison as those films remember to build the attachment to their lead characters and place them in stories with real tangible stakes in them either to the world at large or their own personal world and that doesn’t happen here and it makes the film suffer.

 

- Secondly the action here is very poorly shot for the most part, now the Russo Brothers have shot good action scenes in the past be it the battles on Titan or Wakanda in Infinity War but here they look more the end battle in Endgame which looked very grey and murky and it was hard at times to see who was who and where was where and what was going on and also it felt very small like many of the other battles the Russos did in their MCU films.

 

And those battles often felt more like the actors standing on a green screen stage fighting each other with little to no impact and it shows here too and at times the soft backlighting to hide the green screen effect was very noticeable and bothersome as it pulls you out of the film and takes your focus away from the action going on on screen and I fear with so much content coming down the pipeline and only so many Visual Effects teams around to shoulder the workload that this is going to become a big big problem that I fear will get worse before it gets better.

 

- And lastly the characters here are kinda bland, Gosling more or less stares off into space with a blank stare which he is often doing in a lot of his films and makes for a boring hero in Six, Chris Evans who is often someone I enjoy watching is clearly wanting to channel Vernon Wells in Commando with his over the top performance and campy moustache but it is nowhere as fun or effective as it was in Commando.

 

As for Billy Bob Thornton well he’s Billy Bob Thornton in the standard mentor role, nothing more nothing less.

 

And so that was the Gray Man and I am not angry with this movie but I am very very disappointed in it and Netflix really needs to lift its game if it wants to be taken seriously as a competitive studio as just throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at people to make what they want and then give them no real oversight like a traditional studio would isn’t really working out and with this team in particular it feels worse but maybe we all just saw stuff in them that perhaps wasn’t really there to begin with and they just got lucky with what did work, 1 out of 5.

Film Review - The Princess (2022)

The Princess is an original 20^th Century Fox-sorry-20^th Century Studios film on Disney Plus (have I mentioned how much I hate that new Studios name) and stars Joey King as the Princess who is locked in a tower of her nearby kingdom after refusing to marry a local Lord played by Dominic Cooper, she manages to escape the Tower but must fight her way down to the bottom in order to save her family.

 

The Princess is definitely a movie I did not expect to have as much fun with as I did and the reasons for this are 2:

 

- The first is the action violence in this film is great, there’s plenty of blood and slicing and blood and swords going through heads and kicks to the balls and I loved all of it as so many action films these days chicken out on their violence and don’t go as far they should and I’ve missed it, I’ve missed the blood flowing for the blood is the life, I’ve missed the harder edge where it feels like these fights hurt and drain the energy out of you now so many of them feel like directors playing with overgrown action figures made of plastic and it is very refreshing to see.

 

- Secondly Joey King makes for a very likeable heroine and her quest in this movie reminded me a lot of Bruce Willis as John McClane in Die Hard which this movie is clearly inspired by, she’s tough and resourceful but she isn’t invincible either on numerous fronts we see her trying to outsmart her enemies as opposed to fighting them head on and after numerous times of seeing heroines essentially be able to do everything and anything right away and barely get hurt this is again a welcome change to see.

 

Also Olga Kurylenko is a lot of fun as one of the films villains and I loved her whip weapon, that thing was very cool to see in action.

 

But alas there are 2 big problems with this movie:

 

- Firstly the action editing here is simply atrocious, too often the action scenes are subjected to this fast forward type of editing and it totally takes you out of the fighting on screen because it feels like the filmmakers got nervous about the level of violence and felt they had to tone it down by cutting the fights so quickly in the editing room that you wouldn’t notice as much but it looks so bad and it’s a real shame.

 

- Secondly Dominic Cooper is really bad as the lead villain here, he just doesn’t generate the same level of pompous dickishness that Alan Rickman did so memorably in both Die Hard and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and that is who this character desperately needed as Cooper is dull as all hell in this role and the entire time I was watching him I kept thinking “I wish an Alan Rickman type was playing this role” and someone like James McAvoy who played a memorable villain in Split a few years ago would’ve been much better in this role or his old X-Men sparring partner Michael Fassbender.

 

And so that was the Princess and despite some missteps this is a fun watch that surprised me by how much fun I had with it, 3 out of 5.

Film Review - Thor Love and Thunder (2022)

Thor Love and Thunder is the 29^th Marvel Studios film and is the second Thor film to be directed by Taika Waititi and again Chris Hemsworth returns as Thor who has now shed his weight from Avengers Endgame and leaves the Guardians of the Galaxy to investigate Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) who is killing many of the Gods so he recruits Korg (Waititi) and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) to help and also he comes across Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) who is also wielding his old hammer Mjolnir.

 

Thor Love and Thunder is a fun time at the movies but also one that the more it sits In my mind I’m finding to be a bit forgettable but before I talk more about that I want to talk about what I do like:

 

- Firstly Chris Hemsworth is still a lot of fun as Thor and it feels like since Ragnarok in 2017 he has been a lot more comfortable playing this role by allowing his own natural charisma (he reminds me a lot of Mel Gibson in his prime) as well as his great comic timing to seep into the role and its still good fun to watch him in this role and he seems to still be enjoying himself in this role much like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine before he retired from that role in 2017.

 

- Secondly Christian Bale is good as well as Gorr and while he easily could’ve been a very forgettable MCU villain (many of them are with the exception of Thanos for me) but Bale does a lot with this role especially with his facial expressions to make him a memorable part of the film.

 

But sadly there are some pretty significant problems with this movie:

 

- Firstly I have to talk about Russell Crowe as Zeus because it is embarrassing to hear that attempt at a Greek Australian accent and when he first started talking I thought to myself “You cannot be serious” and all I kept picturing was Con the Fruiterer from the Comedy Company which was an old Australian sketch comedy show his accent was that cheesy to listen to and look this is a silly movie in a lot of places but this part was the wrong kind of silly.

 

- And secondly I have to say I was disappointed in Natalie Portman in this movie now do not get me wrong none of this in any way, shape or form is her fault she is clearly enjoying herself here but the character was so poorly handled in the first two films and she had very little chemistry with Hemsworth in those films and the character was more or less ignored in the films between 2013’s The Dark World and this movie that having her comeback and play a pivotal role just didn’t work for me.

 

And this isn’t the first time sadly that Portman has had to deal with this as she had to deal with it while Padme in the Star Wars prequels where again she was handed a poorly defined character and had little or no chemistry with good Canadian kid Hayden Christensen that when the story pivoted to her being vitally important to the story as a whole it fell flat and as a result the film as a whole both those films and this one suffer as a result and it feels like a real waste of a terrific talent like Portman.

 

And so that was Thor Love and Thunder and overall its fun and many will have a good time but some parts were better than others so I have to give it a 2 and a half out of 5.