In the Grey Movie Review: Mission Failed

In the Grey is a watchable action flick, but its lack of any standout qualities is a sign of diminishing returns from director Guy Ritchie.

If the film is centered around one specific character, it would be Rachel Wild (Eiza González, of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare), who is hired by investment banker Bobby Sheen (Rosamund Pike, of Saltburn) to retrieve a one-billion-dollar debt from criminal tyrant Manny Salazar (Carlos Barde). To do this, Wild employs a diverse team to attack Salazar legally and militarily, the latter side of which is led by the dynamic duo Sid (Henry Cavill, of Argylle) and Bronco (Jake Gyllenhaal, of The Bride!). I use the term “dynamic” very loosely in this case. 

The movie proceeds to take you through the team’s entire operation, from its very inception to the month of planning and setup to its ultimate execution. And given In the Grey is less than 100 minutes long, it shouldn’t come as much surprise that it throws a lot of that at you very quickly. I already struggle with absorbing large amounts of information in little time, so I was constantly playing catch-up with every bit of voiceover exposition from Wild establishing every moving piece in her elaborate plan.

On the one hand, there’s something cool about seeing just how thorough the setup is. Literally every possible angle you could sabotage a person like Salazar from is being utilized, and González plays Wild with enough confidence that you believe she could realistically pull something like this off. But because the pacing and voiceover keep zipping around from one setup to the next for pretty much the whole first half hour, it’s harder to feel actually invested in such clever plotting, let alone follow along with it.

Similarly complicated action movies like the Mission: Impossible series overcome these hurdles with more careful editing and an engaging cast that hooks you in during the downtime. In the Grey’s editing not only feels stitched together at points, but its two male leads are utterly wasted here. Cavill and Gyllenhaal are such effortlessly engaging actors that they manage to give their characters at least a bit of memorable personality, but they’re doing 95% of the work. Outside of an occasional clever quip that’s in line with a Guy Ritchie movie – and the film did get a few decent laughs from me – there’s nothing else to latch onto.

The funny thing is that these two men exchange several flirtatious comments towards one another, yet their chemistry is so thin that I genuinely can’t tell if they’re actually an item or not. González’s character is really the only character on the “good guy” side that I’m going to remember, and even she is reduced to basically nothing in the finale. Bardem is good in his stock villain role, and Fisher Stevens (Asteroid City) surprisingly steals the show as Salazar’s nervous, exasperated lawyer who’s so beyond done with everything as soon as his first main scene. 

Even bits of the story are strangely put together. There are setups for action sequences that are meant to go off as the plan unfolds. The plan goes in a somewhat different direction, and those setups are abandoned after a time skip… only for something else to happen that brings them right back where they were going to be anyway. It’s like putting Chekhov’s gun on the table, then putting it away, then putting it back on the table to be fired. Wild’s voiceover also inconsistently alternates between what she’s saying to characters and what she’s saying to the audience. These aren’t huge issues, but In the Grey contains a handful of such little oddities that don’t really pay off.

Part of me feels lousy speaking so negatively about this movie, because it’s not a bad film. It’s clear that a lot of effort was put into principal photography at the very least. You’ve got actors and stuntpeople actually out there zooming around on cars and motorcycles, crashing into things, setting off explosions, and doing it all on a real, eye-pleasing location. I always want to support action spectacles like that. But there’s nothing here that’s going to wow you like I think it wanted. There’s no major highlight, not much sense of escalating tension, and Ed Wild’s cinematography doesn’t pop in the same way that was accomplished by Guy Ritchie’s previous DPs.

Everything amounts to an ending that’s satisfying on paper but incredibly rushed and even abrupt. The movie at least flies by, but that’s as much a compliment as it is a detriment in this case. In the Grey is an alright action movie that I can see people deeming acceptable as a way to pass some time; Nothing here comes close to being terrible. But I think this is the point for me where the modern Guy Ritchie formula has officially gotten stale, as the spark of his other recent movies just isn’t here. See it if you feel like it, I guess. I’m so uniformly indifferent to the movie that that’s the best sentiment I can think to end on.

In the Grey is now available to watch in US theatres. The film will be released in UK & Irish cinemas on December 31, 2026.