The Gray Man follows the story of a CIA operative who discovers a dark secret of his agency only to be followed by a group of assassins around the globe. The story is the same old spy story packaged in a new bottle and perhaps a huge downer for me considering the stellar cast it had on display. The screenplay here is entertaining but only in parts. At a duration of less than 2 hours(if I discount the 14 minute end credits), the film never slackens in pace. But the question remains, does it entertain enough?

The drama opens in typical style where the protagonist who is a CIA agent has to finish off one of the targets. This until he learns a starling fact. And thus the goose hunt begins from here. One of the highlights of the screenplay include high voltage action sequences and set pieces which are quite entertaining to watch. But the drama suffers from a high dose of such sequences. Now, I was expecting the sequences to be over the top but thankfully they didn’t really get carried away, apart from the fact that the side characters just couldn’t kill off a man(as mentioned even by its antagonist).

In dramas like these, you do get fleeting doses of humour too but here the humour is pretty much non existent. The screenplay is also disjointed in a few places including a random placement of a flashback scene, that when the protagonist is on the run. I felt such sequences were often disrupting the momentum of the screenplay. But credit to the writers for rebuilding the momentum every now and then.

The final act was quite underwhelming and it lacked that punch despite the protagonist and antagonist having a go at one another. A needless twist at the end just doesn’t seem to add up in what turns out to be a rather bland, cliched and predictable screenplay.