- UK release: July 2022 (cinemas 15 July, Netflix 22 July)
- Directors: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo · Writers: Joe Russo, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
- Studio / distributor: AGBO; Roth/Kirschenbaum Films; Netflix
- Genre: Espionage action thriller · Runtime: 122 minutes (BBFC 18)
- Main cast: Ryan Gosling (Drive, Blade Runner 2049) as Sierra Six; Chris Evans (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Knives Out) as Lloyd Hansen; Ana de Armas (Blade Runner 2049, No Time to Die) as Dani Miranda; Regé-Jean Page (Bridgerton) as Denny Carmichael
- IMDb: 6.5 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 45% critics / 90% audience · My rating: 7.5 / 10
This is the film Netflix has spent something close to two hundred million dollars to plant a flag with, the most expensive thing the platform has made, and it has handed the money to the Russo brothers, who walked off the back-to-back billions of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame with a clear idea of how to move a camera around a very large set piece. The pitch is straightforward: an A-list spy chase to launch a franchise, Ryan Gosling against Chris Evans, half a dozen cities, and a budget you can see on the screen. What you are buying with that money is competence and gloss rather than surprise, and whether that is enough depends entirely on what you wanted from a Friday night.
The setup
Sierra Six (Ryan Gosling) is a CIA assassin recruited out of prison, given a number instead of a name, and pointed at whoever the agency decides needs to disappear. On a job that goes sideways, he ends up holding a drive full of evidence that his own bosses would rather did not exist, and from that moment he is the target rather than the gun. The agency outsources the cleanup to Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans), a freelance contractor with no rules and no off switch, who sets about hunting Six across Europe and Asia while a sharp field agent, Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas), is left trying to work out which side she is actually on. It is the burned-spy-on-the-run premise that has powered the genre for decades, dressed in fresh money.
The cast
Gosling plays Six as a man who has decided that staying very calm is the only thing keeping him alive, all dry asides and minimal movement, and it is a smart read of a part that could have been a blank. He is the still centre the film keeps throwing things at. Chris Evans is having the better time, though, shedding every scrap of Captain America to play Hansen as a preening, moustachioed sociopath in tailoring, the kind of villain who is offended when his torture is interrupted. The contrast between the two registers, Gosling’s flatness and Evans’s relish, is most of what gives the film its charge. Ana de Armas, fresh off cutting through No Time to Die, is once again the most convincing fighter in the room and is wasted slightly less than she could have been. Regé-Jean Page brings a cold bureaucratic menace as the man signing the orders.
The craft
The Russos know how to stage scale, and the money is mostly on the screen: a tram-and-square shootout in Prague that flattens half a city block, a fight conducted around a man handcuffed to a bench in the middle of a fireworks display, a cargo plane coming apart in mid-air. Henry Jackman’s score keeps the pulse up, Stephen Windon shoots the travel-brochure locations cleanly, and the thing moves. It also, at times, moves too smoothly. There is a digital sheen over the bigger sequences, a tendency to reach for a drone swoop or a speed ramp where a held shot would land harder, and the geography of a couple of the set pieces dissolves into noise. This is action assembled with great resource and not much grit. It never bores you and it rarely makes you flinch.
How it stacks up
The film it most wants to be measured against is Mission: Impossible, and that comparison is not kind, because the Tom Cruise films sell you the danger of a real human body in real space, and this one is happy to let the rendering farm take the strain. Against the Bourne trilogy it comes off slicker and shallower; Paul Greengrass made the chases feel like they cost the hero something, whereas Six strolls through his with a one-liner ready. The fairer comparison is to Netflix’s own Extraction, the other big-budget streaming action swing, and The Gray Man is the more polished and more starry of the two without being notably more memorable. It has the cast of a Knives Out and the soul of a very good airport novel, which, given the source, is honest enough.
Critics versus the rest of us
The split here is stark. Critics have landed around 45%, with the recurring complaint that all that money has bought something curiously generic, expensive and anonymous in equal measure. Audiences are far warmer, sitting up at 90%, and the IMDb crowd around 6.5 is somewhere sensible in between. I am closer to the audience than the critics on this one, but I understand the reviews. The film genuinely is less distinctive than the franchises it is borrowing from, and a launch this calculated invites a harder look. What the critics undersell is how watchable the result is, and how much fun Evans is having while they tut.
Verdict
This is a film that does exactly what it sets out to do and nothing it does not have to. The plot is off the shelf, the action is handsome rather than thrilling, and it never threatens to stay with you past the weekend. But Gosling and Evans are a genuinely good pairing, the pace never sags across two hours, and it is built precisely for the use it will mostly get, which is a big, loud, undemanding watch from the sofa with the lights down. On espionage and entertainment value it clears the bar comfortably; on craft and ambition it settles for competent. I will happily put it on again, which for this kind of film is most of the verdict. 7.5⁄10.
Availability: A short cinema run from 15 July, then streaming on Netflix worldwide from 22 July.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: Netflix moved fast on the franchise it wanted, greenlighting a sequel with Gosling returning and a spin-off in development, which tells you the audience numbers mattered more than the reviews. The film has settled into its slot as a reliable, much-watched streaming action title rather than a classic, and the Russos’ bet that star power and scale would travel on the platform broadly paid off. It remains on Netflix.
BBFC content advice
Rated 18 by the BBFC for strong violence, domestic abuse. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: There are infrequent scenes of torture, including one in which a man’s fingernails are pulled out with pliers; the actual extraction occurs below frame, but there is a brief aftermath image of the bloody nails. People are stabbed or shot during action scenes, occasionally resulting in bloody detail. A man’s two fingers are severed during a fight, with brief dimly lit aftermath sight of the remaining stumps, and there is equally brief sight of a bloody burn wound on his back. During an action scene we see quick flashbacks to a man holding his young son’s head underwater, and a short flashback in another scene shows cigarette burns on the boy’s arm, implied to have been inflicted by his father.
Additional issues: There is a cut off use of strong language (‘motherf-’); milder terms include ‘bitch’, ‘dick’, ‘shit’, ‘bullshit’, ‘bastard’, ‘piss’, ‘ballsy’, ‘asshole’ and ‘ass’. There is moderate threat, including explosive car chases and shootouts, scenes involving the kidnapping of a child, and a fight scene which takes place on a crashing plane. Other issues include infrequent moderate sex references.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
