The Gray Man (2022)

Score: 1.5 / 5

It was just so boring, I couldn't stand it. The Russo brothers proved themselves immensely capable directors with several of the biggest entries in the MCU, but it seems several of their efforts since have struggled to do much at all. And maybe, due to its star power and big names, their latest will have a healthy viewership. But watchability and draw are very much not the same as enjoyability and artistic integrity, or even solid storytelling. It smacks all the more hollow because it's the first installment of what Netflix seems to hope will be a series.

Ryan Gosling plays Sierra Six, an assassin and spy working for the CIA. His handler is Billy Bob Thornton, and his new boss is Regé-Jean Page; they all have character names, but I didn't care enough to learn them. The story proper jumps right off from these brief introductions, as Gosling enacts his latest mission in Bangkok, taking out a target who is revealed to be a fellow agent. Much like in a Mission: Impossible scenario -- but not nearly as well-executed -- the target tells Gosling about his boss's criminality and provides evidence as he dies. Gosling immediately goes on the run as Page makes him a target in turn. But he's no Ethan Hunt or even John Wick, and frankly I just didn't care. Gosling is stoic and active, and the character is basically void of personality or motivation.

To stop Gosling, Page brings in an ex-CIA mercenary, Chris Evans, sporting a ridiculous mustache and a sociopathic streak. Page seems desperate, and Evans is certainly up to the task by any means necessary. Unleashed on Gosling, Evans is a wild card, resorting immediately to torture and kidnapping and murder. He's probably the most fleshed-out character in this film, but even he has only a handful of concrete character details. He's also not particularly interesting, just pretty to watch (except for that bizarre growth on his upper lip). I hoped when Ana de Armas showed up to help Gosling that she'd save us from these shallow men, but the film barely even recognizes her as a person and treats her like an even more shallow sidekick. The only other woman of much consequence in the film is Thornton's niece, the kidnapped girl, so our two prominent women are relegated to cringey tropes.

The film is occasionally beautiful to behold, but cinematographer Stephen F. Windon of Fast & Furious fame mostly makes the movie look dark, cold, and lifeless. You can't see half the action or most of the globe-spanning locations through the murky darkness. There is almost no sense of fun in the film, and maybe there doesn't need to be, but when it becomes a slog to continue, that's a problem. I actually stopped watching it the first time because I couldn't take it any more; I finished up the last half hour the next day, but frankly I wish I hadn't. What a waste of resources.

The Judge (2014)

Score: 4 / 5

It's been several years since Robert Downey, Jr., seriously performed a serious character. His role in this makes up for all of it, and then some. The Judge is essentially a character study on a highly successful big-city lawyer whose personal life is disintegrating. When he returns to his childhood home to mourn his mother's passing, he becomes entrenched in a murder trial with his father as the prime suspect. Over the course of the film, he reconnects with his roots and heals his damaged relations with his family.

Robert Downey, Jr., proves to those of us who forgot that he can be a leading man. His roller coaster ride from guarded, impersonal urban workaholic to surprisingly vulnerable hometown man yearning for belonging. He has moments of his familiar, slippery humor, but he never sacrifices character or drama for it. More impressive to me is that he is a dramatic leading man in an almost entire cast of men. We don't see this very often, where a bunch of well-regarded male actors join together to create such an emotional movie about family, pride, respect, love, and reunion.

Robert Duvall plays Downey's father, the titular judge, with the gruff short-sightedness we've come to expect from him, but it effectively sets up his domestic problems the film goes on to explore. Unfortunately none of the supporting characters are given much of any dramatic arc, rather existing solely for our two leads to bounce off and develop against. More comic elements to the story are largely brought by Billy Bob Thornton, playing a dangerous prosecutor, and Dax Shepard, playing the town's up-and-coming defense attorney. Vincent D'Onofrio and Jeremy Strong play Downey's two brothers in heartwrenching portrayals of confusion, dependency, resentment, and eventually family. Several other fairly important names show up -- including Denis O'Hare, Leighton Meester, Sarah Lancaster -- but the big "third lead" as I consider her to be in this film is Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air (2009), Bates Motel), playing Downey's high school girlfriend. She is the only supporting role that has much dramatic arc, and most of it is because of the incredible work she's put into the character, not because the script allows much time for her.

It's not an original narrative, but director David Dobkin views most of it with an eye for wildly dramatic lighting and deliberate pacing. Especially engaging for me were the courtroom scenes, with such dark interior colors and stark contrast with garish light streaming through the windows. Dobkin allows for sentimentality in this picture, but he never totally gives in to it. His catches us by small surprise here and again with sharp comedy and brutal emotional revelation. Brutal, you ask? Oh yes. In one scene, Duvall falls and gets sick (presumably from his cancer treatment) and Downey helps clean him in the shower. And then, just when it's almost too much to watch, director Dobkin throws in some comedy in the form of Downey's daughter knocking on the bathroom door.

It's a charming, stylish family drama that partly takes place in a courtroom. Its familiarity and simple plot make it that much easier to project our own associations and emotional baggage onto it, and then receive a cathartic payoff before the end. Be prepared to smile, laugh, and then let the tears come.

IMDb: The Judge