In The Grey

A team of professional corporate adjudicators are hired to recover $1 billion from a criminal billionaire, a mission that escalates into all-out war.

I don't like Guy Ritchie films.

Honestly, I never really have. Known for his relentless editing, his global locations, his self-mocking witty machismo banter, Ritchie is one of those guys who probably owes his entire career to the Post-Tarantino/Miramax Crime Genre free-for-all. I mean, People lost their minds for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels back in the day. I never got it. Even today, whenever I say Guy Ritchie makes bad films, people are like "but what about Lock Stock?” and I’m like “Lock Stock was a billion years ago, and also, it’s just average."

As his career has gone on, I've remained generally unimpressed, often times flummoxed on how he keeps getting financing. Especially after his last few films. Calling them not very good seems unduly gracious. I still tried them out. The ideas often sound fun. But after multiple attempts to kick the football that Guy Ritchie promised that this time he was going to hold for me, I was thinking that I was just going to avoid his films from now on.

But then I saw some of the responses to In The Grey.

I was intrigued by the set-up. Half heist film/half revenge/half militarty action flick. Field agents and boardroom battles. A lot of being clever. A lot of competence porn. I can't avoid that siren call. Lord knows, if it was a superhero comic, I'd pick it up. Plus, the cast was interesting. Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill, Eiza Gonxalez, Rosamund Pike, even Fisher Stevens, the white guy who in the 80s was famous for playing an Indian man in two movies about a sentient killer robot who learned to love, and then, in the 90s, was an evil hacker in the movie Hackers? That's not the usual line-up of lads I'm used to seeing in a Ritchie film. Plus, are Cavill and Gyllenhaal playing their characters as low-key boyfriends?

All right fine, I'll give Guy Ritchie one more shot.

Surely this time I'll finally be able to kick that god damn football, right? Surely this time, he will deliver on his promise to hold it steady!

So...

Rachel Wild is a lawyer with a very particular set of skills. She specializes in recovering debts for rich and powerful clients. In essense, Rachel Wild and her team are collection agents for the mega-rich. When one of her clients are owed a very large sum of money–the kind of amounts that can often rival the GDP of a small country–from very wealthy and extremely powerful people–the kind who are basically untouchable–and those people clearly have no intention of repaying their debts, Rachel Wild takes the job... for a very large percentage of the recovered assets, of course.

To find her targets, to corner them and uncover all of their hidden assets, so that they can pressure them into paying up, Rachel relies on a team of experts in both cyberspace and in the courtroom. And when things get sticky, which they often do, she relies on the more extralegal talents of Sid and Bronco, her trusted clandestine operatives, who are also obviously married, and have been for some time. They're a pair of extremely competent bad-asses, and also a pair of cutie-patooties.

When Rachel’s mentor Braxton is murdered on a small Spanish island, controlled by the ruthless billionaire Manny Salazar, while trying to recover a $1 billion debt Salazar owes to the asset management firm, Spencer Goldstein, Rachel negotiates with Spencer Goldstein executive Bobby Sheenway for the contract.

She wants in.

The first thing she does is send Sid and Bronco out on a campaign of sabotage, bribery, and subterfuge. Soon enough, Salazar finds himself facing millions in losses as Sid and Bronco halt his construction projects and shut down his oil rig. They plant listening devices in the office of Salazar’s attorney, William Horowitz, and Wolfgang Klose, the financier hiding Salazar’s illicit fortune. Rachel has both Salazar’s private jet and his yacht impounded, and finally, after a thousand cuts, they provoke Salazzar into arranging a meeting on his island.

Outnumbered by the very well-armed island police that serve as Salazar’s private army, Sid and Bronco recruit a small team, and arrive early on the island with an arsenal of weapons and vehicles, and set about preparing a number of contingency plans for evacuating Rachel, should things go south.

At the meet, Salazar not only refuses to pay a dollar more than $400 million, he also tries to have Rachel killed, and Sid and Bronco’s team guns down several of Salazar’s men to save her. The attempt on Rachel’s life opens up several options for her in court, which cripples Salazr's empire, and in the end, he agrees to pay his full debt. Rachel informs Bobby, who receives the firm’s congratulations.

Three months later, Rachel is abducted by Salazar.

Turns out, Spencer Goldstein did not honor their side of the contract, and did not return Salazar's seized assets, and he's upset. Rachel reveals that the firm failed to pay her as well, but otherwise, she doesn't seem too worried. Probably because Sid and Bronco soon arrive on the island with their team, their various plans to rescue Rachel from the island still ready. And soon enough, there's a big running battle across the island.

In the end, the bad guys get their just desserts.

You know what? I really liked this film.

I was surprised, but it's true.

Unfolding simultaneously in courtrooms and combat zones, this is the kind of “action” movie that feels like it’s the result of someone having read an article in Rolling Stone or something, an expose on the real people who do a job kind of like this, who then wrote a script about it. While the specific characters and action may be a bit fanciful, the way it handles the details of a jet-setting collections job being done by people who treat violence, court injunctions, and yacht repossessions all as just the various tools they have in their tool box, feels real. But at the same time, it’s got this swagger and confidence and style, like a Daniel Craig era Bond meets something more akin to the Ocean's Eleven reboot, walking the balance between hardcore military action and devil-may-care goofball action with ease, somehow succeeding in an arena where films like Jack Ryan, The Rip, and Play Dirty have all completely failed, and it is clearly having fun while doing it.

And the main reason it’s so appealing is the characters of Rachel, Sid, and Bronco, and their relationship. Unlike something like Backrooms, In The Grey has only the briefest of origin flashbacks to explain where these three met, and other than that, it leaves their very close relationship to be illustrated by the performances pf the actors, no long stories need to be told, no spoon-fed drama to slow down the action, the actors play their parts, and it all comes through clearly.

Also the fact that Sid and Bronco are a couple, maybe, is an interesting choice for what would presumably otherwise be considered a “dude film” by many dudes, as Ritchie is beloved of dudes. Now, are they really a couple? I mean, it‘s an easy yes, but while I am loathe to spoil it for any potential hopeful crowds, Gyllenhaal and Cavill never kiss, it’s never confirmed out loud.

Still, as I said, there’s the whole "actors' performances illustrate the backstory" thing happening here, and clearly there's more going on between them than the usual macho dude banter. Was this just a choice between the actors, or was this an idea from Ritchie’s script, and then perhaps kept low-key, portraying it as possibly just “two pals ribbing each other” so that all the bros, whose favorite movie is still Fight Club, and whose shitty taste causes them to flock to every Guy Ritchie film that comes out, won’t get mad? Maybe. Either way, the usual quips and banter hide a more casual intimacy, best illustrated by the moment when Sid is leaving Bronco in their truck, so he can pull off a distraction, and Bronco calls after him, “I love you,” and Sid glances back in wordless affirmation. It’s treated as funny thing, the usual kind of smart-ass behavior that Gyllenhaal is known for, but at the same time, there’s a truth in it, it’s a small character moment, but one that makes them more endearing as a pair, and also... gosh, wouldn't that be terrible if one of them died on this mission? I hope that doesn't happen...

Plus, despite its title, In The Grey operates in a world of blacks and whites. The good guys win, and the bad guys get what they deserve. In today’s world of openly evil monsters just swimming in their piles of criminal bigot money like Scrooge McDuck meets Hitler, well... that’s pretty refreshing.

So, if you’re looking for a good bit of fast-talking, super-stylish competence porn with all the boom boom and flash and bang that you could want, one that delivers a very satisfying ending, while also being about found families and the ties that bind, In The Grey is a pretty good bet.

This is a fun Saturday afternoon watch. Thumbs up.