Going into this movie, I could feel the painful sting of boredom pulling me deeper and deeper into a peaceful sleep that I could not control but my love for the Russo brothers kept me awake and I'm happy to say that I'm not disappointed.
The movie, GrayMan, is a story about a man who is convicted of murder and is recruited into the covert operations unit of the CIA where he functions as an assassin, shooting first and asking questions later. But along the line, he goes rogue and escapes with a valuable asset of the CIA. Forcing the CIA to go after him with everything they have.
The movie's plot is nothing new, as the plot is something that has been recycled over and over again by movies focused on national security, like the Hitman, 007( James bond), xxx the return of Xander cage, black widow, etc or even In Mafia gang movies like John wick. But then the way they delivered the movie is something I am truly happy about.
While I watched the movie and dissolved myself into its plot, I could feel a sense of two iconic movies which I have seen before, within the plot,black widow and John wick 3.
The plot had a feeling of black widow in the sense that, the CIA, a body that is supposed to maintain and resolve crimes, decides to go the extra mile of creating a ghost team which they titled The GrayMan saddled with the duty of eliminating potential targets or threats to the CIA or its operations. And each recruit( who are always convicted criminals) were given numbers as names. The same thing also happened in black widow where young orphan girls were taken in by a government agency and trained under a covert operations body under the government agency to infiltrate and annihilate.
And this plot works out very nicely for both black widow and the GrayMan movie. But what really boosted the movie's tone was the action scene which saw the rise of conflict for the protagonist (Six), and this plot was also used in the iconic movie is John wick 3, where John wick goes rogue and a bounty is placed on his head. This plot, for me, became the backbone of this movie because every moment when something happens I start to ask myself, will he survive? even though I know he will because he is the man character.
Aside from these two plots, other minimal plots tend to conflict with the protagonist's survival plot, like protecting what he stole from the CIA and rescuing his friends.
In the end, the Russo brothers emerged with a beautiful story.
Apart from having a glorious movie plot, I still feel that it would have failed, if, the right actors/characters were not used
The characters
For the part of the characters, there are a lot of actors that contributed their talent to build this story and give it life, but ultimately the gold lies with actor Ryan Gosling, and actor Chris Evans.
At the start of the movie the first person or face we were introduced to was that of Ryan Gosling who played the character, Six( the protagonist). At first, I couldn't recognize him through his thick beard and heavy makeup, at one point I thought he was Ryan Reynolds stacked with beards, and at another point, I thought he was Robert Downey Junior, only younger and with a properly grown beard instead of a goaty. Nevertheless, Ryan Gosling delivered. There is a line in the movie he used that stuck with me till the very end and had me rethinking action movies as a whole, and that line is, "who throws a loaded gun?". It happened In the heat of the moment, guns were firing front, left, and right, and six was pinned to a corner, he threw his gun to his partner who was free but before he could throw the magazine which had the bullet, she ran off into battle with an empty gun... I'll let your brain figure out how this unfortunate incident ended 😂....and yes it was extremely laughable.
Chris Evans(Mr. Hansome), came onto the scene a little bit later when I was still trying to figure out Ryan Gosling's character. He had a weird mustache that made him look like a pornstar from the 80s or a straight-up pedophile who for some weird reason gyms a lot. Anyways I think, his look was deliberately made to paint him as the bad guy because if I'm being honest with myself, because painting Chris Evans black or bad, is like trying to paint a whole house using an artist's brush.
But, it seems like, Hollywood developed some back doors to make people appear as the bad guy without excessively overdoing it.
And in this movie, they used a mustache, because, in my perspective, when I see a mustache, I see Adolph Hitler. And for me, that is as bad as any human can get.
As for Chris Evans acting, he wasn't much of a believable bad guy, although he went all out and did everything right, but, whenever he ran, all I could see is Captain America, or the infamous " on your left" scene from the avengers between him and falcon, which is now a worldwide meme. There was a problem with his character, he was not bad, he just loves breaking the rules without being charged or reprimanded for it, which is the same thing that the GrayMan are trained to do, so I had a bit of a problem trying to differentiate them based on their actions or morality because they are both killers (six and Hansome).
But, he did deliver some heavy and believable action sequences, especially his final boss fight, I just love it.
As for the Russo brothers, I don't need to say much as the movie speaks volumes of their capabilities, and their expert direction, which leads the movie to a having one of the best action scenes with perfect camera angles, some of which, are similar to that of the fast and the furious franchise. But one thing I would say, is that I appreciate their tenacity to go loud, with massive explosions, building destruction, and recreation of fun marvel moments like the train fight from Shang chi the legend of the ten rings, as well as, an intense car chase scene and the making Our beloved captain America, into a childish Adolph Hitler.
Finally, with all said and done, it's not in my power to tell you what to do or what not to do, but if you are planning to watch the GrayMan movie, then, you had better buckle your seatbelt, because, the Russo brothers, didn't come to play.