Budgets seem to get inflated lately. Probably two contributing factors are higher demand for bankable stars due to the streamers’ need to produce exclusive content and the the current practice of buying out revenue points right away to allow for immediate streaming. In this case one could assume Gosling, Evans and the Russo Brothers to have contractual incentives, which they would have received 6-12 months down the line for an old fashioned cinema release but are now part of the 200M budget.
Scarlet Johanssen’s law suit against Disney certainly helped her colleagues.
So, it’s a perfectly decent movie, but I preferred it when my superspies were Matt Damon and didn’t destroy half a city trying to compete with the MCU.
If you really want to see Gosling being a badass and watch a good movie, Drive is the one you should watch. This one, I dunno, like other Netflix action movies, it’s alright, but never makes the jump to anything more than just content.
They couldn’t spare any of that $200 million to punch up the dialogue in this? I mean, there were some good moments here and there, but considering how heavily this leaned into humor (which was a good idea), way too many of the gags feel like first drafts they never got around to actually making funny.
Oddly, my thought after watching it was, “MCU action sequences are so much more grounded!” (Though admittedly I was thinking of Winter Soldier/the first part of Civil War/Black Panther/the first part of Shang-Chi and not, say, an Avengers movie.)
Other thoughts:
I understand completely where the $200 million went. A large and pricey cast, a zillion expensive international locations (and no doubt delightful international hotels), almost non-stop action scenes, what must have been a whole lot of smoke machines, etc. etc. (Whether it was worth it is a different question.)
Whoever wrote this very definitely doesn’t care for Harvard.
Constant camera motion and non-stop action does not excitement make. What this was lacking was any sense of build up and release. A whole lot happened but I felt nothing. If you go go go all the time you end up nowhere in particular.
Chis Evans in full asshole mode sounds a lot like Kirk Douglas.
Pewter figurine end credits work fine for superhero movies but less so for something like this. Would not buy the limited collectors’ edition set.
This is yet another modern action movie with a score that might as well not be there.
“I prefer aluminum siding.” “At least then you don’t have to paint” would make a perfect gag from Top Secret or Naked Gun.
A hedge maze. Really. Really?
Shea Whigham sighting! (For about two seconds)
Billy Bob understands that underplaying is the only way to deal with this kind of dialog
Movies continue to pretend that destroying a physical copy of digital data is somehow meaningful. Dramatic necessity trumps the reality of cloud backups.
Color me skeptical that a teenage girl has a collection of carefully curated, eclectic 45s. (And no, they’re not her parents’. They’d have to belong to her grandparents.) But hey, gotta get the Tarantino tropes in there.
Speaking of which, you could use this as a dictionary of spy movie tropes from the last 20 or 30 years.
Overall: this is the perfect movie to watch on an airplane. There’s always something going on, but if you miss a bit because you’re talking to the attendant, you didn’t miss anything vital.
Yep. This is what the Mission Impossible movies tend to do so exceptionally well when it comes to pacing. They have fewer action set pieces, and one usually knows about one or two of them already going in because of the marketing machine hyping up the latest crazy stunts Tom Cruise pulled off, but the time between them is spent on character moments and building anticipation by having elaborate planning phases.
I watched it last night and enjoyed it. Both Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling were great in it. I like a good, dumb globe-trotting action thriller, and this was better than most. I thought it was more enjoyable than the last few Bond movies, for example.
I thought Chris Evans’ role was pretty generically over-the-top and disposable, TBH. Lots of people pull that role off and some probably do it a lot better. Without him, it’s the same movie, or a better movie. The standouts for me were Gosling and Thornton. Without them, it’s a worse movie.
There were several things that bugged the hell out of me.
Like, you pretty much destroy a city to kill one dude? What? And it’s mercenaries doing that. Dudes who I assume, want to get paid, go home, and not rot in jail the rest of their lives.
And sure, it’s mercenaries doing that because the CIA has rules and regulations, that it won’t break. Sure. Except the blackmail is because the bad guy has used the CIA to do bad stuff that goes against the CIA rulebook.
Make it a comic book. Dude survives everything because he’s superhuman. And the dudes destroying the city and not giving a F about their lives, well, Hail Hydra equivalent.
I didn’t take it (or expect it) to be trying to be realistic. Modern spy movies aren’t realistic, except rarely — something like Tinker, Tailor or The Good Shepherd comes to mind. The Bourne stuff isn’t quite so silly, but it’s hardly realistic either.
It’s a silly action movie. I don’t care much for most of them, but as I said, Gosling is charming enough to pull it off and make it enjoyable.
I think one of the problems with modern action movies is the sense that the stakes have to be ridiculously high. If you’re not destroying the world, or threatening to destroy the world, then the movie isn’t worth making.
But it is trying to be realistic, the dude isn’t bullet proof, nobody flies, no Wolverine healing factor, etc.
It’s “my 6 shooter can shoot people hundreds of meters away, and has much more than 6 bullets” realistic, but still. Problem is, they were trying to compete with an Avengers movie, or Transformers, or any other “not even gonna pretend this could happen” movie.
I’ve read all of the Gray Man novels, and they tend to get better as he gets a feel for the character and matures as a writer. In terms of “reality” in assassin book series I’d put the Gray Man series as better than the Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn, not as “earthy” and grounded as the Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva. There are (in the books, haven’t watched the movie yet) moments of almost James Bond ridiculous escapes early on in the series, but also moments where he gets a bit “deeper.” I’m guessing the best way for me to watch the movie is to watch it for what it is and not compare it to the books.
He was all-in and willing to get hammy with it, I wish they had utilized him better. I loved his look. But that mustache wrote checks his character could not cash.
Yeah, that’s what I meant when I said some of the MCU action scenes feel more grounded. It’s not that they’re realistic, but they have clearer rules about how they work. Why doesn’t Black Panther die when people shoot him with guns? Because his magic suit prevents it. Why doesn’t Cap die when falling from a great height? Because he lands on his magic shield. Etc. etc.
But why doesn’t Gosling die when a zillion people shoot at him? I have no idea, other than “the plot requires he survive.” Why are handcuffs an insurmountable obstacle one moment and something he can easily get out of the next? I have no idea. Etc. etc.
It’s supposed to be impressive that a mere human can do the things Gosling does in this movie … but it’s not, because it’s super clear he survives, not because of his abilities, but because he’s protected by plot armor.
(Which Chris Evans’s character points out repeatedly, following the modern screenwriter trope of having the characters point out the flaws in the screenplay to try to preempt the audience’s complaints.)
I was amused by this, and the way the central Prague set piece keeps going and going and going was entertaining - and I was even more entertained by the way they treated a tram like a fucking bullet train.
It has a lot of charming actors, but little personality. It feels assembled, not crafted, and I swear the Community episodes the Russos directed had more style than this. Maybe they’re the ultimate journeymen in that they can’t bring something that’s not on the page, and if they’re developing something from the ground up, it all turns out beige? I dunno. Ultimately, it felt like #content, not a movie.
I simply don’t understand what sort of tone they were going for in this movie. As the Big Picture podcast said, it’s got that Marvel feeling that nothing really matters, except somehow Marvel movies feel more consequential than this. I was getting vibes of Bourne, Wick and Killing Eve, but much more of the latter. I did not think this was worth $200 million, and it’s hard to see where the money went.
