In the Grey
This action-packed heist movie from Guy Ritchie is a tonne of fun, thanks to the charismatic lead performances from Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal and Eiza González. While the central premise is an odd one, the real draw is seeing Cavill’s and Gyllenhaal’s clandestine operatives put together and execute their elaborate plan with military precision and a twinkle in their eyes.
Premise: Lawyer Rachel Wild (Eiza González) operates ‘in the grey’ areas of legality to recover her clients’ money, deploying legal methods in the courtroom herself, and relying on the clandestine skills of her associates Sid (Henry Cavill) and Bronco (Jake Gyllenhaal) to apply extrajudicial pressure through bribery, sabotage and surveillance. But they have their work cut out for them when an executive (Rosamund Pike) from a global asset management firm hires Rachel and her team to recover a $1 billion debt from Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem), a ruthless billionaire who controls his own Spanish island, and who murdered the last person sent to collect the debt.
Review:
By this stage, you probably have a good idea already (even before watching In the Grey) whether you’re vibing with Guy Ritchie’s recent (post-pandemic) output. His final film before the pandemic, 2020’s The Gentlemen, was arguably his last dalliance (on the big screen, at least) in the British gangster genre, and since then his films have played on a much bigger, global canvas, either with a relatively grounded tone (2021’s Wrath of Man and 2023’s Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant), an overtly comedic tone (2023’s Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre), or somewhere between the two (2024’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare).
In terms of his recent output, In the Grey is closest in tone to The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare – but it also shares a lot of DNA with Guy Ritchie’s (sadly underrated) 2015 adaptation of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. That film was a little more overtly comedic than In the Grey, but they’re both films that have a playful spirit at their heart, that involve engaging heists and action-packed sequences, and that work as well as they do in large part because of the chemistry between their charismatic central trio – which in the case of In the Grey, is Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal and Eiza González.
“…the characters are cool, competent & fun to spend time…”
All three actors are never anything less than entertaining in everything they’re in, and they all clearly enjoy working with Guy Ritchie, given that this is Jake Gyllenhaal’s and Eiza González’s second films for Ritchie, and Henry Cavill’s third. Their characters in this are inherently cool, competent and fun to spend time with (think a more action-packed, less twisty take on Ocean’s Eleven), and while the plot or characterisations may not be the most complex you’ve ever seen, it’s also fair to say that they’re also far from simplistic or two-dimensional.
The story is an original one written by Guy Ritchie, and the premise is quite unusual – not just because the protagonists are (when all is said and done) glorified debt collectors, but also because their client is a global asset management firm, which some would say is almost as bad as having your good guys working for a bunch of greedy bankers! But the film tries to address this by pointing out (in an early scene) that the money being managed by the asset management firm belongs to “real people”, and also by making it clear that Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem) is an evil human being who thinks nothing of stealing $1 billion and then murdering anyone who comes after it. The final act of the movie also has something more to say about the politics of this wealthy echelon of elite society, while never losing sight of the fact that it is, first and foremost, an entertaining action thriller.
“…a glossy thriller with a charismatic cast & well-executed action set-pieces…”
Fisher Stevens also appears as Salazar’s lawyer, who is effectively Rachel Wild’s nemesis in the courtroom, but the talents of Kristofer Hivju are largely wasted as Salazar’s head of security, given that Sid and Bronco primarily face off against nameless goons when the action kicks off. Meanwhile, Rosamund Pike is little more than a cameo – she’s in this perhaps simply because she wanted to share some scenes with Eiza González again after their work together on the excellent (but largely overlooked) I Care A Lot.
Ultimately, you probably know by now what you’re getting with a modern Guy Ritchie film, but if you’re looking for a glossy thriller with a charismatic cast and well-executed action set-pieces, In the Grey delivers.
