Unsurprisingly, the file reveals the depth of Carmichael's craven and treacherous push for power at all costs. Hansen is brought in by a crooked CIA director named Carmichael (Rege-Jean Page), after special black ops agent "Six" (Gosling), part of an underground initiative known as "Sierra," once led by a grizzled man named Fitzpatrick (Thornton), goes on the lam after receiving a secret thumb-nail drive from his most recent target, a former Sierra operative himself. You get the impression the actor made a deal with the Russos: He'd play Captain America in the last two Avengers sequels, if he got to play the villain heavy in one of their next pictures. Like a box of Milk Duds, it might not stay with you long, but it's easy enough to gobble down.Įvans, in particular, playing an expunged lunatic former CIA agent gone private, sporting a hideous 'stache and sockless shoes, embraces his character's chaotic bonhomie with both arms and both legs ("What I do can't be taught," his character, Lloyd Hansen, crows, in the aftermath of a botched asset retrieval operation so poorly managed it seems to leave half of Prague in ruins). It helps tremendously that the cast they've rounded up, via casting director supreme Sarah Finn, including such luminaries as Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Billy Bob Thornton, Alfre Woodard and Chris Evans, all seem well in on the fun.
Instead, the Russo brothers, working from a script Joe Russo co-wrote with their longtime Marvel Comics Universe collaborators Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have crafted a silly-but-entertaining action thriller that seems to know exactly what "The Gray Man" is, and have absolutely zero problem with it. Say this for a film that begins with a fight scene amidst a nest of New Year's Eve firework cannons in Thailand, and ends in a bloody showdown at the center of a topiary garden in Croatia: It's not intended as a think piece.