‘The Gray Man’ Review: Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans Try to Out-Kill Each Other in This Spectacular Netflix Fireworks Show

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticAt age 13, Ryan Gosling was spreading cheer on “The Mickey Mouse Club.” But something must have snapped in the dozen years between “The Notebook” and “La La Land.” The Canadian heartthrob seems committed to convincing us that he can be a cold-blooded, even-keeled, unsentimental killer.

Starting with Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” followed by the Danish director’s “Only God Forgives” and now playing the title character in the Russo brothers’ “The Gray Man,” an actor who once radiated charisma in “Crazy Stupid Love” has been perfecting an inexpressive cool that borders on nihilism, keeping his pulse stable and poker face fixed as he offs whatever adversaries come his way.

Gosling doesn’t just want to be an action star; he wants to be the Hollywood version of Alain Delon, the handsome French icon who played a sociopath with perfect cheekbones in “Purple Noon” and a hit man with no visible emotions in “Le Samouraï.” “The Gray Man” is the payoff of Gosling’s low-key reinvention: an incredibly expensive, stunningly executed action vehicle in which he plays Six, an ex-con-turned-CIA assassin who’s so good at his job that he becomes a kind of liability, landing him at the top of the agency’s kill list.A reportedly $200 million whopper that Netflix will release first in theaters (on July 15) and then a week later on its streaming service, this is “The Avengers: End Game” directors Anthony and Joe Russo’s answer to the James Bond franchise (which reached its end game, with Daniel Craig at least, in last year’s “No Time to Die”). “The Gray Man” has the huge, globe-trotting heft of that franchise and a few can’t-be-accidental overlaps — but more on that in a moment.