Sierra goes rogue when he discovers that his employers are up to no good, as the evidence is a data chip in a locket on the body of one of his victims: a very sketchy McGuffin whose exact meaning is never really clarified. So the Agency ruthlessly sends in a psychopathic freak and torturer to silence him: one Lloyd Hansen, played by Chris Evans with a creepy mustache and braids. Ana de Armas does her best as Ryan’s agent-slash-wingwoman, Dani, who kicks as much as he does. The awkward CIA commander is played by Retze-Gene Page, but Sierra’s old boss, Fitzroy, is a straight-up good guy played by Billy Bob Thornton. Fitzroy has a fatherly concern for Sierra, because she once asked him to babysit his young niece Claire, played by 13-year-old Julia Butters in a mild and impossibly cute role. She’s pretty much unrecognizable from her glorious turn as the precocious child actor in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, who reduces Leonardo DiCaprio’s cowboy star to tears of joy praising his performance. The film zooms maniacally from exotic tax evasion location to exotic tax evasion location, each announced on the screen in huge, all-caps letters (VIENNA, PRAGUE, BAKU). There’s plenty of gonzo action but no heart and no real dramatic bent. The Gray Man is released July 15th in US and UK cinemas and July 22nd on Netflix.
