(Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...or genre or theme...pretty simple. Today: Chrises Evans and Hemsworth do Netflix [the lesser Chrises, Pine and Pratt are Amazon bound])
Spiderhead - 2022, d. Joseph Kosinski - Netflix
The Gray Man - 2022, d. Anthony and Joe Russo - Netflix
This year (thanks to a multi-year delay on one) we're treated to two new films from Kosinski. The first, the mega-blockbuster of the year, Top Gun: Maverick, which would have secured Kosinski blank check status had he not also come out with Spiderhead mere weeks after.
I didn't really care for Maverick, but that film wasn't really Kosinski's vision...when you're working on a Tom Cruise vehicle, Cruise is in control. I liked a little better Spiderhead, which finds Chris Hemsworth starring in his second Netflix movie, with Miles Teller giving Hemsworth a beef-show rivalry after getting shockingly jacked for his Maverick co-starring role. The plot has Hemsworth, Steve, a tech billionaire, operating a legal, remote prison, where the prisoners are treated and fed very well but are subjects in a test of chemical control. With a surgically installed unit in their spine, their handlers put the inmates in controlled room experiments, sometimes paired up, sometimes solo, where they mess with their emotions.
There's a level of amusement and (sometimes great) discomfort (and sometimes great discomfort at being amused), as we watch the subjects get pushed into traumatic depression, or heightened into states of orgasmic amour with an person they're otherwise not attracted to. It seems to be that much of this is not necessarily science, but voyeurism and power tripping on Steve's part. But the deeper we get into the film, the more we learn Steve has his own bag of secrets, some fascinating vulnerabilities (I wish the film had explored more) and also strange delusions as to what his place in this prison is. Steve takes a real liking, and feels a strong sense of kinship with Teller's Jeff, who he starts trusting more and more, though never truly letting go of the warden/prisoner control. It's a fun role for Hemsworth who gets to be charming, gregarious, but also menacing and sinister, and flip through those regularly.
The sets are right in my wheelhouse, a lot of concrete and wood panelling that feels retro-futuristic, very 70's but also beyond, and Kosinski really leans into all the angles this architecture presents. Still a good visual stylist, the film looks good, but it feels a very contained movie.
There's something a little obvious about the story, most of its rhythms feel completely expected. There's not really any true surprises. As much as I found both things to be intrigued with and generally enjoy, the final act, literally and figuratively, doesn't stick the landing and ultimately sinks the film for me. I was expecting it to end with something more in the dystopian chaos range of a j.g. ballard (see High Rise) -- the film operates mostly in that sphere for the first two acts (albeit a bit neutered with it's yacht rock soundtrack) -- the last 15 minutes or so don't adequately escalate in a way that makes sense for the conceit. It should have been an orgy of chaotic drug freakouts in that prison, and gotten very wild, but it doesn't really at all. It feels safe when it shouldn't be at all. It's downtempo finale honestly feels like a side effect of COVID-era filmmaking, keeping people apart and things small.
The Gray Man is the opposite of small. The most expensive film Netflix has produced yet, the streamer I think felt that somehow the Russo's success with billions-earnings of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers:Endgame was a full credit to them, and not a confluence of dozens upon dozens of things going just right. Yes, they can take some of the credit, but at best their take of the success of their MCU entries is 49%...not even a controlling share.
AppleTV+ found out with the critically maligned Cherry (with Tom Holland) that maybe the Russos need a producer behind them that knows exactly what they want to keep them on track. I imagine The Gray Man was already deep in production by the time Cherry was released, and by then the genie ..err.. money couldn't be put back in the bottle.
Based off the bestselling novel of the same name (film studios love to tout "based off the bestselling novel" but at this stage a bestseller can be, like, 20,000 copies, a mere fraction of a fraction of Netflix's massive (though declining) global audience, so it means nothing) The Grey Man reteams the Russos with their MCU screenwriting collaborators Stephen McFeeley and Christopher Marcus, and former Captain America Chris Evans, so one would thing bringing that whole gang together for a globetrotting spy vs. spy action movie would been nothing but gold.
Gold sure isn't Gray. BAM! ZING! Got'em! (Ahem.)
The film puts Ryan Gosling in the role of an CIA operative who is the best at what he does. He's a troubled man, whose proclivities for violence were put to "good use". But when he discovers that his latest mission was a job meant to cover up his handler's misdeeds, he is cut loose by the agency and goes on the run. The agency knows he's basically their best guy, so they send the only one they're sure can get him, a free-market mercenary maniac played by Evans, with a funny lil mustache.
The two chase each other across Europe, with Evans pulling zero punches in leveling buildings and destroying all manner of vehicles and possibly causing dozens of collateral damage deaths in the process, and Gosling spending little effort to stop the destruction. (The amount of people in this movie who have no problem with all the destruction and unseen death as a result but then get all upset to learn that Evans has kidnapped a preteen girl who Gosling is like the godfather of, well, then for some reason that just too far for them...it's absurd logic. All that collateral damage, again, unseen, likely killed a half dozen girls).
The movie's cast is stacked. Ana de Armis being a colleague of Gosling's who winds up helping him despite her reservations (despite the massive budget, de Armis doesn't get an action scene remotely as good as her role in No Time To Die). Rege-Jean Page seems kind of wasted as the desk-bound CIA bad guy, and Jessica Henwick is definitely wasted as his lackey. Billy Bob Thornton is Gosling's mentor, and is fine, while Alfre Woodard gets an all too brief cameo that seems over almost as soon as it starts.
There's a pretty huge action scene on a streetcar in Vienna, which is the only sequence in the film that implies how expensive the film was, and also the only one that really sticks out to my memory of the entire production. The rest of the film sees a lot of action for action sake that hasn't stuck in my brain.
Taking away the 200 million dollar price tag, and it's a slightly above average action film that feels kind of like an old school 80's superstar actioneer, the kind of perfectly fine movie you would find Schwartzenegger or Stallone in back in the day. But you slap that price tag on it and it needs to deliver a LOT more than it does. It doesn't live up to the expectations of a film costing that much, and it's hard not to think about, or have it influence one's opinions on the movie. I think had this been theatrically released first, and bombed with critics (and probably the mass audience) it would have found a second life in streaming as a "hey, that's not that bad" reclaimed sleeper hit.
I would watch another in this series (as it totally leaves it hanging) should it ever materialize, but reign the budget in folks.
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