It has been a long time since I have truly enjoyed a movie in Netflix that seems to me not only in big trouble with its decreasing number of subscribers but mostly to lack of any good offering lately. Not even their documentaries are exceptional anymore. In fact, I have been trying to finish out of charity and old time’s sake since May the new season of “Stranger Things” that has become so strangely uninteresting even with its music selection.
Yesterday was a very exhausting Sunday with so many patients to visit and anoint in our hospital that after a much delayed lunch, I tried treating myself with a good dose of action with its new release “The Gray Man”.
But, I was totally wrong.
It has a great stellar cast led by Ryan Gosling but sad to say, sayang (what a waste in Filipino).
It started great but quickly became so boring. It is like being misled into a new roller coaster in town but it turned out it is just a caterpillar ride that you just tell your self, “what the heck… let us just try to enjoy the stupid ride.” Again, because it is sayang.
Action movies are meant to excite us but “The Gray Man” has a lot of grey areas that are not only confusing but actually distracting and detracting from whatever plot it has which is the usual story of some CIA big shots out to terminate a morally upright agent (Gosling) who had uncovered their dark and evil operations worldwide.
And the main culprit is perhaps is its long duration of two hours, bringing you to different cities around the world that it looked like a travel show. Hence, the problem with its pacing wherein when actions begin exploding, they would abruptly stop and shift somewhere else with new twists. As I have told you, it is like taking a caterpillar ride which you thought was a roller-coaster.
Worst of all, the ending was not good enough to even motivate viewers to make wild guesses on what could have possibly happened to the bad guys. Of course, it left so much room for a sequel but after seeing this initial installment based on Mark Greaney’s novel, it is doubtful if anyone would really care to wait for its sequel.
The microchip everybody wanted to have was simply pulverized — and, oh! how crudely and primitively it was done by the evil CIA official who prides himself in the movie as a graduate of Harvard that you now begin to suspect anyone can easily brag being an alumnus of any Ivy League school or even Oxford like our own president without any bearings at all of a genius or an erudite.
There are, however, two saving factors in “The Gray Man”.
First is the parting line by the Tamil assassin who surrendered the microchip embedded in a pendant to the agent helping Gosling because the CIA bosses were “not honorable people” partly because they hurt women. There are some notable scenes women are highly extolled and for that, the movie is exceptional for me. One of the few instances in Hollywood where women are explicitly mentioned as persons to be respected and cared for.
Secondly, I think Gosling could be another Bruce Willis with his physique and acting abilities if given with better handlers next time.
Go see for yourself… at least, I have warned you.
