The Gray Man (2022) (1 Viewer)

[Mikael Soderholm]

And Ana de Armas was, just like in the last Bond, totally underused. Why do they hire a brilliant actor who can totally own the screen, only to give her background action?
Hardly any significant lines, and not as good action as in Bond.
Hope she was well paid.
And gets a real action movie next time.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

It's not that much plot actually, it just seems so because the time thing makes it convoluted, but the second time you watch it and you understand the backwards time thing, you see it's basically smoke and mirros, overly complicating what is a simple spy story, but nicely dressed.

Convoluted is a good way to describe Tenet and yes, Nolan does that intentionally. At the same time as he is convoluting things he is also doing some fairly simple and funny things that I think are designed to sort of make fun of or have fun with how movies are made today.

In Tenet, if you want to understand the story he forces you to have to keep track of the plot. Which in many ways he does not really allow to fully gel until the end. The whole time travel concept is really used to make the audience pay attention to the plot. This is the total opposite of the approach to big blockbuster films today, which don't want the audience to have to concern themselves with plot at all and really are just concerned with moving from action sequence to action sequence. Writers on these big pictures seem to feel plot is something that aggravates an audience and so it is boiled down to the absolute most basic thing. I think the rule is you should fully comprehend the plot no more than 15 minutes into the picture and the rest of the movie is a ride. The idea being to move you as rapidly as possible from moment to moment, or big event to event. Without having to ever think about what is happening.

Nolan does some goofball but funny stuff in Tenet, like have the protagonist in the picture just called the protagonist. I thought that was pretty humorous and intentionally so. I think he does this because most big budget pictures do treat their characters more as things than people we are watching. Rather than doing any sort of character development they just throw some very simplistic moment at you. In The Gray Man, Six is the good guy because the first thing they have him do is not take a shot at his target because a child is too close. Then they repeat this and have him befriend a child. Then they repeat it again in having him protect her and if you did not get it, they repeat it again at the end of the film.

This is the hit you in the face with a hammer approach to big budget films. Nolan always goes in the opposite direction of this.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

And Ana de Armas was, just like in the last Bond, totally underused. Why do they hire a brilliant actor who can totally own the screen, only to give her background action?
Hardly any significant lines, and not as good action as in Bond.
Hope she was well paid.
And gets a real action movie next time.

Well, Ana and Ryan are apparently signed up to make another one of these, which is sort of frustrating, because they could be off making much better films. I am sure on these big budget pictures they are well paid, so that is good for them.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Well, Ana and Ryan are apparently signed up to make another one of these, which is sort of frustrating, because they could be off making much better films. I am sure on these big budget pictures they are well paid, so that is good for them.

It's also good for those of us that liked this movie, present company not included.