Critic Reviews

Guy Ritchie‘s In the Grey offers what fans expect from the director: relentless but nimble editing; breathtaking locations (Spain, Saudi Arabia, the Canary Islands); clothes, shoes, and hair to die for; the self-mocking machismo and playful insults of male bonding; and a character’s verbal summary of a plan intercut with shots of the actions being performed.

Ritchie is more deeply invested in the thought-through craft of making a B-movie than many of his peers and there’s a smooth sensuousness to how he moves, each of them looking, feeling and sounding like films he genuinely cares about.

In the Grey, written and directed by Guy Ritchie, is a nifty bit of entertainment.

With particular attention paid to character dynamics, Guy Ritchie returns to what he does best. His most successful projects, such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, thrive on that quick and snappy dialogue. As his career has progressed, he’s expanded his horizons and proven that he can craft a compelling story apart from his origins as a filmmaker – but whenever Ritchie leans back into those core elements, it feels like a welcome return. That’s exactly the case here, and the three leads are the clear beneficiaries.

These days, Ritchie’s films are all about fabulous looking people causing a ruckus and blowing a lot of stuff up and taking out less good-looking bad guys in the bargain. “In the Grey” not only delivers these goods but goes into copious detail about just how Sid and Bronco get their ruckus up to speed.

It’s Ritchie in fun-workhorse mode, more businesslike than Operation Fortune but fleeter than Fountain Of Youth.

Ultimately, you get an acceptable thriller with some sharp lines, two leads you like, and far too much scaffolding for what arrives in return. Not a disaster, but no sign of peak Ritchie either. It is, in a way, fitting that it ends up in the grey.

At some point before the truncated-seeming finale, the film is just chasing its own tail.

A sexy, snappy Eiza Gonzáles steals the show from costars Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill, but this Guy Ritchie mission impossible is not that bad, just generically, disposably ordinary, a good way to kill time while nodding off on a flyover.

If nothing else, Guy Ritchie’s latest effort proves that a movie can be ridiculously convoluted and simple-minded at the same time.