{"id":52880,"date":"2026-05-16T21:06:51","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T13:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=52880"},"modified":"2026-05-16T21:06:51","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T13:06:51","slug":"henry-cavill-and-jake-gyllenhaals-in-the-grey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=52880","title":{"rendered":"Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal’s In the Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n
<\/p>\n

\n

In the Grey<\/strong> is in theaters now.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The old adage \u201cthe worst thing you can be is boring\u201d is very much underlined with In the Grey, a deathly dull would-be action thriller that feels three times the length of its 97-minute run time.<\/p>\n

Though Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal get top billing, the film\u2019s true lead is Eiza Gonz\u00e1lez. She plays Rachel Wild, a lawyer whose opening voiceover explains the film\u2019s title in explicit detail, as she talks about how she operates within both legal and illegal and moral and amoral parameters and, yep, outright says she works \u201cin the grey\u201d because that\u2019s just the kind of movie it is.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s paper- thin plot finds Rachel using her skills and the elite team – and bottomless resources and finances – at her disposal to target Salazar (Carlos Bardem), the crime lord who\u2019s stolen a fortune Rachel is tasked with getting back by any means necessary. Her two best agents are Sid (Cavill) and Bronco (Gyllenhaal), who head up the aforementioned illegal side of her operation, using all sorts of tactics to trick, track and hunt those Rachel needs dealt with.<\/p>\n

The opening scenes of In the Grey feel very cliche but also don\u2019t stand out as notably bad or unwatchable, as they set the stage for the story, though it does <\/em>stand out how much Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s voiceover is used to explain how both her job and her larger team works. But as the film continues, it becomes egregious how much the film stays in the same mode it opens in, as it tells, not shows, over and over and over again.<\/p>\n

A classic part of a heist or espionage movie is a \u201cthis is how our plan will play out\u201d sequence, where we hear how everything is supposed to go for the team\u2019s big operation \u2013 often using VO alongside shots of the locations targeted \u2013 and get the lay of the land before, inevitably, something goes awry. And those sequences can be super fun and are an appreciated part of the genre. But writer-director Guy Ritchie seems to have the mistaken belief that it would be really fun if a movie was nearly entirely <\/em>made up of those sorts of sequences, hammering home the technique into monotony.<\/p>\n

It is truly maddening how much of this movie is composed of voiceovers from either Gonz\u00e1lez or Gyllenhaal explaining what\u2019s going on right now and\/or what\u2019s supposed to happen next.\u201c<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

It is truly maddening how much of this movie is composed of voiceovers from either Gonz\u00e1lez or Gyllenhaal explaining what\u2019s going on right now and\/or what\u2019s supposed to happen next. It\u2019s not just hand-holding to an extreme degree, it feels lazy and as though Ritchie just didn\u2019t want to figure out any other way to include exposition and simply wasn\u2019t interested in any sort of characterization or personal dynamics, so he skipped as much normal dialogue and character interaction as possible.<\/p>\n

Rachel is fierce and shrewd and she\u2019s a shark and\u2026 that\u2019s it. There are no other nuances to what we learn about her after what is made quite clear the first few minutes. But that\u2019s better than Sid and Bronco, who are simply there to be generically smart and badass, with zero other layers or reasons to care about them. There is almost nothing in these roles for Cavill and Gyllenhaal to do but glower and yell stock lines about sticking to the plan and getting to the rendezvous point. Given their dueling dullness, it\u2019s curious why these two characters weren\u2019t simply made into one, since there\u2019s so little to make them feel different from one another except that one is British and one is American.<\/p>\n

The same goes for their larger team, which includes dudes with names like Baker (Kojo Attah) and Gucci (Jason Wong). Everyone is stoic and super capable, but lacks anything that makes them distinct in personality or skillset. There\u2019s no wit, no charm, and no cool touches for any of these guys.<\/p>\n

A film like this usually gets mileage out of how a team of this sort has to improvise and pivot when things go wrong, but this group seem too<\/em> good and too prepared to ever make things interesting because they really just seem prepared for literally anything. Most of the time, they don\u2019t seem two steps ahead of their enemies, they seem 20 steps ahead, and coupled with them being blank slates, personality-wise, it makes watching them operate boring, no matter how many nameless thugs they shoot or get in car chases with.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ritchie has had some big highs and lows in his career, and in recent years has been making a lot of movies very quickly that are mostly forgettable. But he\u2019s never made one as dull as In the Grey. It especially stands out that he\u2019s re-teaming with frequent collaborator Cavill here, given these guys have much much livelier \u2013 if uneven \u2013 films together, like The Man from U.N.C.L.E.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, Cavill and Gyllenhaal truly have nothing to work with here, performance-wise, while the naturally likeable Gonz\u00e1lez is fine but feels miscast. Though in her mid-30s, she still reads fairly young onscreen in both looks and demeanor, and doesn\u2019t feel like she quite embodies someone meant to be the experienced and dominant leader \u2013 her team uses the codename \u201cMom\u201d for her \u2013 as Rachel is intended to be. This is underlined by the presence of Rosamund Pike in a few scenes as a rival of Rachel, given Pike effortlessly exudes the energy Rachel is meant to and feels like she\u2019d be the better casting choice for the role.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Grey is in theaters now. The old adage \u201cthe worst thing you can be is boring\u201d is very much underlined with In the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[22839,15907,22840,15286,16068],"class_list":["post-52880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-cavill","tag-grey","tag-gyllenhaals","tag-henry","tag-jake","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}