Directed By Guy Ritchie

Starring – Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill, Eiza Gonzalez

The Plot – Follows a covert team of elite operatives who live in the global shadows, as comfortable wielding power and influence as they are automatic weapons and high explosives. When a ruthless despot steals a billion-dollar fortune, the team is sent to steal it back on what would be for anyone else a suicide mission. What begins as an impossible heist gets much worse, spiraling into an all-out war of strategy, deception and survival.

Rated R for violence, adult language and a sexual reference.

IN THE GREY | Official Trailer | Only in Theaters May 15

POSITIVES

As the last of a dying breed of action-dedicated directors whose endearment to practicality elicits authenticity in enthralling environments, Guy Ritchie has made a reputable brand of yearly consistency to stake his claim for being in the running for the most consistent director going, and while the action in his latest film is deduced significantly when compared go his indulgence throughout some of his more recent films, it still helps underline the film’s defining climax with an integral balance of urgency and devastation for his maniacal mayhem. As previously assessed, there’s a refreshing element to Ritchie maintaining as much practicality in the depths of his enthralling execution as artistically possible, here with engulfing explosions, methodical camera placements, and live action artillery evoking an effortless believability to sequences so manufactured with technique, without a single glaring weakness in the candidness of the depiction between them, utilizing sleekly smooth editing transitions and breathtaking scenery of the Canary Islands as a means of articulating a big screen capture that immerses us in the upper class elegance of these insanely wealthy characters who drive the conflict of the narrative. On that aspect, the script is honestly quite flawed, however I think the one appealing factor that it has going for it is the dissecting world-building within this underground banking, that proves life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows for wealthily comfortable characters, and that their motivated thievery only constructs a glaring spotlight on the details of their devious actions for others to bring to justice. While I always find it difficult to relate and even invest in these kinds of characters, Ritchie’s direction seems more primed towards the elaborate preparation of the heist that ultimately humbles them with humility, with painstaking detail to the minimalist degree that allows audiences to imagine it playing out in their heads long before the operative even takes shape. Conveying every single aspect of the heist before it happens is a risky proposition towards maintaining a vested audience, but Ritchie is wise enough to compensate with some unforeseen difficulties practically surmising out of thin air, that require our protagonists to instantly adapt to circumstances that are out of their control, and if Bronco and Sid’s physical resiliency wasn’t already integral in grappling with these greedy sharks and dangerous mercenaries, their maintained composure over shifting power dynamics illustrates their intended desire to remain one step ahead on the psychology of overcoming their surmised conflicts, with roles that feel tailor-made to fit Gyllenhaal and Cavill seamlessly. While the script’s material gives them little to work with, Gyllenhaal and Cavill rise to the occasion with stoically stimulating turns that conjures an infectiously endearing dynamic between them out of thin air, with each of them not only evoking larger than life screen presence towards feeling so imposing upon the movie’s antagonists, but also the bluntly dry kind and impeccable timing in their line deliveries, that make them such a blast to experience together. Considering both have previously worked with Ritchie on other films, their approachability to portrayal blends seamlessly into the tone and atmosphere of this established world, without either of their roles feeling dominant over the other, and when combined with the fearless ferocity of Eiza Gonzalez unloading one of her most captivating performances to date, rounds a trio of mesmerizing protagonists with the right kind of subdued charisma and chemistry with one another, the likes of which thankfully aren’t enacted with an unnecessary romantic tryst at the movie’s forefront.

NEGATIVES

While I’ve said many different things, positive and negative, about Guy Ritchie’s expansive filmography over the last sixteen years, I’ve never saddled him with being a lackadaisically lazy and boring storyteller, that is, until now, with one of the weakest and most unengaging screenplays that I’ve unfortunately had the trouble of experiencing for theater prices. Boring because the script feels like the hack-and-slash byproduct of a studio intruding with the constructive notes of how they think the films should play out, particularly in the minimalized condensing of the establishing opening act, which after a sliced summary of a long-winded exposition dump in overhead narration form, feels like it thrusts abrasively towards the back-breaking devil in the details of this surmised plan between this covert team, where the first fifty minutes of the movie’s 93-minute runtime is essentially a play-by-play scenario of how our protagonists expect this plan to go, without anything that even closely resembles a compelling story, snappy dialogue, or meaningful characterization to keep me firmly invested in what transpires. The lack of fleshed out characters is especially troubling for this established plot, as not only does it pit the wealthy against the wealthy, without any of them representing the soulfully stirring interests of the audience, but also evades emotional dexterity in ways that could’ve provided compelling drama to what transpires throughout, a feat that is already humbled by the too-cool-for-school personalities of Bronco and Sid, which can’t be bothered to express even momentary doubt about their plan, in order to compromise the cool factor that persists artificially hollow in Ritchie’s films. The protagonists certainly lack humanity in ways that feel grounded or relatable, but the antagonist (Portrayed by Javier Bardem’s brother, Carlos) is every bit the substandard stock billionaire madman that adorns these movies as a cliche of its own, with Bardem never attaining the menacing stature of his youthful counterpart, instead reveling in the confines of mediocrity, without anything that even closely resembles imposing ambiance to make the character feel memorable. Even when the script has the benefit of attaching some energetic enticement to the movie’s climax, featuring some much appreciated action to an action-heavy director, it doesn’t build towards the kind of prominent pay-off that justifies the extent of the audience’s investment, with an abruptly enacted closing shot that eviscerates what little momentum is left, every bit as much as it conveys the lack of garnered stakes in a billionaire’s game of robbing from the rich to give to the corporation. Stepping out of my searing hatred for this morally tone-deaf screenplay, some of the presentational components equally echo the mundanity of mediocrity that keeps it from being truly memorable, particularly the stock score from Christopher Benstead, without anything instrumentally profound about the conventionalized compositions that correspond with these interpretive visuals so blandly banally. Being that Benstead is a long-time collaborator of Ritchie’s, there’s an expectation in the collective vision that should’ve permeated something scintillating to moments with a void of urgency in their enacted palpability, but nothing comes close to reaching some of the most expressively unique scores of their previous collaborations with one another, resulting in these unappealingly phoned-in themes that feel so disappointingly interchangeable with one another, especially since Ritchie’s ambition as a filmmaking seems to be at an all-time low. Finally, while most of the performances from the decorated trio help to deliver some personality to a film that feels atmospherically stiff, the mishandling of Rosamund Pike is perhaps the movie’s single biggest glaring detraction, especially after a memorable antagonist role in Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, which reaffirmed Pike’s antagonistic tendencies. It’s not necessarily Pike’s fault, as she’s doing the best she can with such thankless material, however her role is one that could honestly be played by anyone, with regards to a lack of dimensionality or opportunity in the character, and with Pike being an Academy Award nominated actress in her own right, there’s nothing her that even attempts to tap into her limitless talents, leaving me perplexed at not only how Ritchie was able to cast the actress to a role so tragically forgettable, but why Pike felt that she had to lower herself and her talents to this level.

OVERALL
In the Grey is a generically bland and disposably unmemorable crime heist caper from Guy Ritchie, whose lack of conductive creativity or evidential effort on an overly indulgent screenplay of unrelenting expositional set-ups leaves minimal opportunity for the film to find meaningfully merited pay-offs to a lumberingly lagging audience struggling to hang on. Despite credible performances from the decorated trio of Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill and Eiza Gonzalez, as well as practical dependency on the devastation of its action-oriented climax, the film is all fluff and no frenzy, without any kind of compelling characterization or conflictual stakes to override its many detractions, proving there’s no shade of grey to one of Ritchie’s most disappointing efforts to date

My Grade: 4.6 or D