Guy Ritchie is officially in crank-’em-out mode, In the Grey (now on VOD platforms like Prime Video) being his eighth film in seven years, with a ninth (Wife and Dog) coming before 2026 ends. He once again draws upon his familiar stable of actors for a snappy action-thriller, casting Eiza Gonzalez (The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Fountain of Youth) as a mega-lawyer who uses Jake Gyllenhaal (Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant) and Henry Cavill (The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) as her muscle. Do we expect this movie to break any new ground for Ritchie? No. Do we want it to? Not necessarily. Is it any good? Yeah, it is. Why? Well, we’re gonna get into that right about… now.
IN THE GREY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: A word of advice if Rachel Wild (Gonzalez) ever drops by: Just pay her. She’s an absolute laser of a lawyer whose specialty is debt acquisition. Of course, lasers of lawyers don’t shake down Jane or Jimmy Sixpack for missing credit card payments; Rachel’s out to get one beeell-yun dollars from Salazar (Carlos Bardem), after he stiffed executive seatwarmer Bobby Sheen (Rosamund Pike) and the Spencer Goldstein firm. Rachel isn’t the first to try to collect; in the opening scene, Salazar shows his stripes by giving her predecessor a one-way ticket to Corpsetown via his head security honcho Axel (Kristofer Hivju, Game of Thrones). Consider the stakes established.
But hey, NBD for this lawyer, who uses lawsuits like snipers and hires Bronco (Gyllenhaal) and Sid (Cavill) to use the actual sniper rifles. While Rachel freezes ‘n’ seizes Salazar’s many assets, our two dudes, who I’m pretty sure are a gay couple, hire a crew of buff ‘n’ tuffs to counter the crooked gazillionaire’s inevitable violent overtures. BANG goes the gavel as Rachel frustrates Salazar’s lawyer Horowitz (Fisher Stevens); BANG BAM POW go Bronco and Sid’s bullets and bombs, but not until after the signature Guy Ritchie “Here’s The Plan Flash-Forward/Voiceover Sequence” that lays out what they’re gonna do so we can revel in some anticipation of them doing it, and then grin when they finally get to do it. (There’s a few of these in this movie alone.)
Our “good guys” are surgical where Salazar is stubborn. As he tries to bargain his way out of it – Rachel says no way Jose to his offer of a $400 million payoff – Sid and Bronco’s crew plants bugs and hacks computer systems and gear up with guns and bazookas and grenades and trucks and motorcycles and off-roaders and gyrocopters in preparation for Salazar’s inevitable deployment of countless faceless hired-gun goons. There’s even a shot when Bronco outlines all the cool stuff they have to do and Ritchie bulletpoints them on screen like the world’s most violentest grocery list. And obviously, it’d be positively TRAGIC if we didn’t get to see any of this stuff get used. And here’s where I note that In the Grey is not a tragedy.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Um, all eight of those Ritchie flicks save for Aladdin (why did he want to do a dumb Disney remake?) and The Fountain of Youth (why did he want to make a crappy National Treasure ripoff?). Slick, flashy, convoluted, more-action-heavy-than-comic action-comedies are his forte these days, although The Covenant had a little more on its mind than just entertainment.
Performance Worth Watching: Gyllenhaal has that wide-eyed, half-cocked smile that fits the classic Ritchie don’t-take-any-of-this-too-seriously tone perfectly. (Wild, considering the dude’s a bleedin’ Yank.) Otherwise, In the Grey could stand a little more scene-stealing here or there.
Sex And Skin: Nah.
Our Take: In the Grey is a perfectly acceptable twists-and-turns set-’em-up/knock-’em-down low-flame legal-and-extralegal procedural for an hour – and an absolute RIPPER down the stretch. It’s fairly fun to watch guys with names like Honeybench and Tunk and Cheesegrater (Did I mention Bronco’s last name is Beauregard? Bronco Beauregard. Get the f— outta here!) lay out a plan called Banana Pie, but even more fun to see them execute it at the expense of several dozen total maroons with the ace marksmanship of a drunk dad stumbling up to House of the Dead during his kid’s Chuck E. Cheese birthday party. Ritchie can execute thrilling action sequences in his sleep and still be better than most – and this movie’s big climactic kerflooey is more memorable than anything he’s done since 2008’s Rockarolla.
Whether you care or not is the question. And of course you don’t, because the goal here is simple fun via razor-sharp escapist entertainment. Our investment in these characters is minimal because they are minimalist characters. They exist to do cool shit and that’s it. The wrinkle is that Rachel and her dudes aren’t really good guys or bad guys, hence the title of the movie. Morality, schmorality. It’s all relative anyway because Salazar kills to keep money he stole and Bronco and Sid kill to get stolen money back. One’s inevitably slightly more justified in killing swaths of heavily armed morons than the other.
And I’ll argue that it’s easier to root for our Grey protagonists precisely because they’re pancake-flat characters. The less we know about them besides the fact that their corporeal and chemical construction makes them baseline human, the better. It’s just easier to root for ethically compromised people that way, especially when they’re sexy and cool in their stylish sunglasses and suave haircuts, delivering their lines like they’re on a firing range and moving things along in a relentlessly paced 97-minute movie. Love it or hate it, In the Grey is as Guy Ritchie as a Guy Ritchie movie gets.
Our Call: Seriously, that final half-hour is a beast. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
