The Gray Man doesn’t start strong and I was all settled into a really mediocre and annoyingly long sit… and then it wormed its way into me until I realized, no, I was actually having fun with this nonsense. And it is nonsense… and it’s not more than the sum of its parts, but those parts are individually a bit of a gas.

The flick stars Ryan Gosling as a casually distracted superspy/assassin/troubleshooter for the good guys (I guess). He stumbles onto some intel that puts him in the sights of bad guy Chris Evans and his amusingly unfortunate facial hair and distracting biceps.

I really didn’t think this would be much more than the usual low effort Netflix movie we all like to complain about. And there’s a good argument that it’s just a C grade actioner with upjumped A-list talent and the Russo Brothers working far below their paygrade. But I dunno… the bon mots were witty, the action is energetic, the camera work is fun, and the actors are just having random fun.

The plot doesn’t matter at all and soon we’re given a more personal rescue mission as though the flick is giving up on that plot. And Ryan Gosling playing this spy with a kind of distanced or distracted attitude just doesn’t feel like he’s taking this seriously. And maybe he shouldn’t.

But Chris Evans is having too much fun with his random and off-kilter line delivery. All he wants is to kill Gosling and it’s fun when his incompetent team of killer goons can’t. I was amused. It didn’t take much… jus wind Captain America up, slip him some bad guy juice, and let him go.

And Ana de Armas shows up… and while her character doesn’t make a convincing argument why she’s in the movie, she can single-handedly storm my heavily-defended medieval mansion any time she wants. She makes a pretty convincing argument that she needs to get more bad-ass female action hero rolls.

So, yeah, this nonsense wormed its way into making me like it, despite my initial cynicism, superiority, and sneers. The actors are having fun, the Russo Brothers are putting far too much effort into their camera work, and the dialog is amusing and sly in a way that makes the distracted plot not matter. I kind rather liked this one.

Score: 84