In The Grey – the trailer sold the movie
Talk about your hit or miss directors! I get hopeful when I see Guy Ritchie’s name attached to a movie. I get even more hopeful when I see talent like Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill attatched. It’s easy to remember his top-shelf annual watch successes like the Sherlock Holmes series, Snatch or Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Even his near misses like Man from U.N.C.L.E were entertaining. It makes you forget disappointments like The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. That’s how I felt about In The Grey. Like Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, a movie stuffed with great actors with a genuinely exciting premise, it seemed like a sure-fire winner.
And then it wasn’t
I genuinely don’t know what to make of Guy Ritchie. We can’t say it’s because of the acting talent. You’d be hard-pressed to assemble a better cast than In The Grey. Gyllenhaal and Cavill are bona fide A-Listers. Rosamund Pike and Eiza González are certainly well-known. So what went wrong? Can’t a star-studded cast turn a mediocre story into a hit? Wellllll…
I know what I said
Last week’s review of Mortal Kombat II, I pointed out that retread, predictable, mediocre story + Karl Urban = a decent enough movie. And for MKII, it did. That was just one talented actor. So, wouldn’t more be…more? Apparently not.
So what was the problem with In The Grey? After giving it a bit of thought (which is what you come to expect from me) I think it was the story itself. On multiple levels.
The story of In The Grey was just what the title claims…a story of people making insane amounts of money doing legal but morally questionable things to people doing illegal and morally despicable things. No redemption arc that would have made this a better movie. Not even some internal conflict about motivations or ends justifying means. Just rich people busting the balls of other rich people, with no other motivation than loyalty to one another and to the job at hand. People willing to do whatever it takes to achieve the goal. That’s the first problem with this story.
But wait…there’s more!
Setting aside that we, as normal, average people with a moral compass that has something other than $$$ as its magnetic north, there’s the actual storytelling structure. In The Grey spent an abnormally large amount of its runtime defining and explaining multiple plans for how this movie would play out if all went perfectly. Spoiler that isn’t really a spoiler: it didn’t. I mean, they spent a really long time explaining these things. Not necessary. We get the premise. Plan in place. Plan goes off the rails. Chaos ensues.
What you would expect is a lot of time exploring the stars reaction to their thwarted plan, their emotional struggles. Maybe even a dark night of the soul moment. In The Grey didn’t really have any of that. We were already having struggles emotionally connecting with these characters who live in a totally different (and also, not really real) jet-set/soldier of fortune lifestyle. We couldn’t even have empathy for them on any human level because they were all so emotionally vacant.
Give us the upside
Sure it had action. But action for action’s sake is not much more than background noise. I can’t remember a single action sequence in this movie that sticks out. We’ve seen it all before. And without any investment in the characters, holding your breath to see if they live or die doesn’t happen. I guess if I had to put a pin in the best thing about this movie, I’d say it was Jake Gyllenhaal. In his screentime, he brought as much personality as he could. And his scene from the trailer where he was cautioning Gary to stand quietly in the corner? That was the best scene of this movie. And THAT is the biggest disappointment.
So, I am giving In The Grey a very ‘meh’ 2.8 out of 5. There’s nothing new here. Screentime for the headliners was pretty minimal. Henry Cavill was so unmemorable that I can’t even recall one scene of his that stood out. Eiza González had the most minutes. But how much entertainment value can the ‘soulless, tough as nails corporate attorney looking pretty and kicking legal @$$’ provide? This movie was somewhat short on actual action, LOOOONG on exposition and really short on heart. Pretty people doing selfish things and it’s gotten old. And boring. It felt like Ritchie might have been phoning this one in, sad to say. Full disclosure: I nodded off during the big finale action sequence. What does that tell you?
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