The Big Picture - ‘The Gray Man’ and the Top 10 Trash Special Ops Movies

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

The Russo Brothers’ new Netflix action extravaganza got Sean and Chris Ryan thinking about a subgenre they love: trashy spy subcontractor stories. They discuss ‘The Gray Man’ (1:00) and the movies it’s lifting from in depth (33:00). Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Chris Ryan Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit Superstore.ca to get started. I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about trash spies, subcontractors, special ops assassins, roughnecks and spooks, the guys hired by the guys hired by the guys. I'm talking to one of the guys, Chris Ryan. What up, Chris? It's the Wetwork Pod. We're here to do a job, and that job is to talk about the movie The Gray Man. We are the boys who brought you Garbage Crime. We brought you

The Prestige Dirtbag. We brought you Junk Sci-Fi. Now our latest subs genre deep dive. The inspiration is The Gray Man. Chris, let's talk about The Gray Man first. Yeah, let's do it. How are you feeling about The Gray Man these days? You want to start generally or do you want to start specifics? I think it's probably good for the audience to start generally. We can say that this is a movie that is directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. They are two of the critical blockbuster filmmakers of the last 10 years in Hollywood. They're responsible for Captain America Winter Soldier,

both installments of the Infinity Saga Avengers films. And Michelin star chefs of director bullshit. Truly gifted at explaining the Italian auteurs that inspired their comic book movies. This is an action movie. They really like action movies. This is their piece de resistance of netflix actionry it stars chris evans and ryan gosling as a pair of dueling cia operatives for lack of a better word it's based on a novel from 2009 by mark greeny um this is a ostensibly netflix's attempt to grab the Shane Black hole and fill it. If only. With our streaming space.

And you know, this is one of the worst reviewed movies of the year. I'm not really sure how it's doing from a streaming perspective. It's the number one movie on Netflix. Okay. They announced that they're making a sequel and a spinoff. The reason we're doing this episode is not necessarily

because it's a $200 million Netflix movie. It's not necessarily because it stars Ryan Gosling, a favorite of ours. Sure. I like Chris Evans well enough. Me too. It's not even because it's the Russos. It's because it's about these subcontractors. Yeah. These men who operate in the shadows

and get hired to to kill people vague sub-departments of the cia or otherwise unnamed government agency operating typically internationally we'll get to all the rules of the sub-genre i want to ask you a question to start off well let me just say yeah we love these movies this is is an incredible subgenre. These kinds of movies, they're my self-care. Like, when people are like, I'm going to light a candle, I'm going to turn on, like, some aromatherapy, whatever you got to do to

take you out of what's going on in the world. You like to get really, like, lathered up, too, right? Like, a lot of moisturizer and, you know, just sit in it. Very specific robe that I wear. Sure. And then I watch guys leap from trains and kill nuclear physicists. What was the question you were going to ask?

Do you think that the more that a movie is in your wheelhouse, the more harshly you judge it? Because this is what I can't get past with The Great Man, is even when it was announced, I was simultaneously like, this movie is made for me and there's no way this movie is going to be good. I think that there are too many forces at play that even mess with the idea of that question. Because if it's a Paul Thomas Anderson film, I'm actually quite, as everyone knows, predisposed to looking for all of the things about it that I love. Right. And part of that is because,

you know, themes reoccur and actors reoccur and someone, a filmmaker has built a world. Genre stuff is way tougher because on paper, every horror movie is the best movie I've ever heard of. Every time I hear a horror movie idea, I'm like, God damn it.

What a brilliant idea for a movie. And then invariably only 20% of them are good. But when they're good. There's a witch in this Airbnb? Honestly, yes. So this Uber driver is killing people? That's incredible. And then you watch the film and it doesn't work.

Yeah. But I think especially with action, the variance is very high. And so I didn't look at this movie and say there's no doubt that this is going to be good. I think there's also a larger Russo brothers conversation to be had here as well. That factors into that. Yeah. I mean,

it's a very specific feeling that you get from watching a disappointing movie that you feel like was made specifically for you. But I think that the problem with this movie is that it wasn't made for anyone. And so there's parts here's, here's, here's some anatomy of gray man. You've got elements of

john wick combat nerd stuff you've got some born cinematic intelligence stuff like you know espionage stuff you've got um a tone that i say liberally borrows from the LOL nothing matters it's all bits Marvel house style. And there's just like characters with zero stakes city leveling action you know and it's insanely violent with no blood letting like every fork in the road they just go up the

middle. It's like they want to have like torture scenes but nobody is really like in pain. It's kind of like this weird thing where everybody always says, the great thing about Netflix is they just don't give you any notes. You can just kind of execute your vision. Weirdly, we've seen over and over

and over again that that might not be a good thing. That somebody needed to get in here and be like, guys, what movie are we making? Do you guys want to make a really cool bloody 90s action movie? Or do guys want to make a really cool bloody 90s action movie or do you want to make a pop glib fun spy romp and it's neither of those things and it has entered a zone and i don't think this movie is necessarily as kind of soulless or pointless as free guy which i picked on a lot last year. But it is in the same realm of frictionless smarm.

The whole point of the movie is like, this is easy to watch and it's light on its feet. It's also completely full of shit and everything that it's doing is digitally animated. Yeah. And you never feel good about any of the people in it because none of them are real people. And not every action movie needs to be littered with real people.

I just rewatched Predator last night. I wouldn't describe the humans in that film as particularly three-dimensional. No. But at least the stakes of the movie feel coherent and exciting. And this movie, which is based on kind of an airport novel that is a little bit in the Robert Ludlum zone, a little bit in the Lee Child zone of like a kind of our favorite guests on this show and one of the great dramatic filmmakers of the last 20 years. And it was going to star Brad Pitt and then later Charlize Theron in a

gender-swapped role, which is something she actually went on to do in Atomic Blonde, a very similar kind of a film. I can't even wrap my head around James Gray trying to make this movie, but it certainly would have been significantly different than this. And, you know, the movie is also written by Marcus and McFeely, who were the writers on a lot of Marvel movies.

Yeah, Civil War, Winter Soldier, I think. Yes. And so they have a sense of the Russos' tonality, a tonality that the Russos developed working on a lot of sitcoms, like Arrested Development, like Happy Endings, a lot of shows that you and i love community and their kind of genre bending explosion explosion funny joke formula worked so well there and worked pretty well in the marvel movies too i like most of their marvel movies quite a bit as soon as you

take them out of these like prefabricated worlds anything that is meant to be in a world that is meant to resemble our own. So this and Cherry essentially. Exactly. They're two feature films since then. I just, I don't, I'm lost. I don't understand what they're going for. I think they're lost. I mean, by the same token that I was like,

oh, it makes me more frustrated to not enjoy something that I ordinarily do enjoy. I think it would make me, it's actually more vexing that two guys who are like, here are all the cool movies that we like that influence this film and they've done essentially mini festivals screening

some of the movies that are supposed to have influenced The Gray Man and I'm like, this is one of my favorite movies. These guys obviously like all the same shit that you and I do so it's really strange to see this as their as their homage to it it's like their homage to these international action films that we like literally were raised by and then they're like still kind of screwing up the physics of a scene of like whether or not someone can run up a wall or not versus like there's a lot of like

superhero cgi action in this movie that you just takes you right out of any kind of um emotional attachment to what you're watching do you think it's that simple that they are using a form of physical filmmaking that just doesn't fit or is kind of like you know not how we think of this kind of a movie like the born identity of course is, you know, not how we think of this kind of a movie. Like The Bourne Identity, of course, is a, you know, a signature film. Yeah, and the whole thing is that it's so visceral and that the camera is in a small car with Matt Damon as he gets banged around like a European capital. Yes. This movie is doing the opposite in that it is entirely digital.

I thought of one sequence in particular. It's basically made by a drone. I mean, like half the shots in this. But here's the thing, and I don't mean to get us off topic, but we freaked out over a movie that was essentially made by a drone earlier this year. Ambulance.

Yes, where it's like somebody who is like, okay, I have this technology. What's something people haven't seen before with this? What could I do that I couldn't do 10 years ago that I can now do? I can throw this off a building. I can throw it under a car. Nobody gets hurt. The Russos are just like, eh, let's just do every establishing shot's a drone shot. Let's just do, if a train's coming, there'll be a drone shot that

goes past this train. It doesn't have any cinematic tension to its usage. Yeah. I mean, there are multiple set pieces in this movie. They're all bravura in a way, but in the most bland way possible. It opens with like what should be like a pretty astonishing scene. This sort of nighttime assassination attempt. Which is just straight up like,

you guys definitely watched Only God Forgives. Yes. And there's some really interesting set design and costumes in those sequences. It's particularly what Ana de Armas is wearing.

This sort of flower suit that she has on is really amazing. Brian Gosling is wearing this magenta suit. It's very stylish and stylized and it feels like everyone who participated is the right person. Except maybe the Russos? They might be lacking a kind of

vision that you need to pull something like this off. I'll point out a couple of pretty critical sequences. There's one, there's a sort of a plane exploding in midair and all of the people who are on the plane, you know, have packs and parachutes

and except for Ryan Gosling, he's sort of floating through the air. Now we've seen similar sequences of this recently. We saw a similar sequence in a Dark Knight movie. We saw a similar sequence in The Mummy. The Tom Cruise movie recently. We've seen a lot of sequences like every other scene in mission impossible tons of tom cruise movies over the years and so there's really nothing that can be accomplished in that scene other than making it like slightly more vertiginous and exhausting and they accomplish that but it's kind of like to what end this just feels like something i saw in

another doesn't look like a real plane or the sky. Completely out of date. Yeah, I mean like, and that's so the other thing that I wanted to ask you beyond, you know, when a movie is made for you, do you start to judge it more harshly is that if this was the 41st most important movie of the year, do you think you would have had more fun with it? But it's

the 7th. No, I don't think so. Like if we had a normal 2018 movie year where there was just tons of stuff to see and the gray man was like an amazingly expensive dump you area movie. I'll tell you why I wouldn't feel that way

because we already have true lies. That movie was made almost 30 years ago. Is it a perfect movie? No, but it's a movie that was perfect to me when I was a teenager. And I watched over and over and over again and loved. And the reason I loved it is because it was both. It was a self-aware riff on these ridiculous Arnold Schwarzenegger terrorist, you know, action thrillers.

And it was also an awesome action thriller. And this movie is trying to do the same thing it's trying to have its cake and eat it too it's got this absurd over the top villainous subcontractor

in Chris Evans Chris Evans relishing the idea of getting as far away from Steve Rogers as possible in an absolutely brutal takedown of this movie

Adam Naiman I thought wrote brilliantly about how this character and the performance that Evans gives he understands what he's going for.

But in fact, he has taken him so far beyond to become like sort of blandly reprehensible. He's acting for the gif. He is acting for like the meme rather than like doing a convincing part at all. Yes. And I have a lot of time for Chris Evans. And I fucking laughed like 18 times during this movie.

It's something he would say. I'd be like, huh, huh. And then I would immediately feel like the empty calorie of that laugh because it wasn't like, it wasn't actually rooted in anything. I was just like, Oh, like three writers spitballed until like they could come up with the weirdest, craziest thing he could say at this moment. And then it just kind of like flushes right out of you. Yeah. And to your point about them programming films that inspired this movie, the other big,

I think major set piece of note is this massive shootout in Prague, which reportedly took days and days and days to shoot, like almost a month to shoot, and clearly cost tens of millions of dollars. And it's all oriented around Gosling's character on the run, hiding effectively behind a chain to a park bench. And in this city square,

hundreds of police officers and military figures and CIA operatives all descend upon the square in an attempt to kill him. It's extremely elaborate. It's mostly visually incoherent. It's really loud. It's not fun. And we never think for a second that Gosling is in peril. And it is not accomplishing one one-hundredth of what the post-heist shootout

and heist in Heat is doing. It's like taking all the little bits and pieces. It's got the loudness. It's got the physical intensity. It's got the sense of like a siege happening in a city, but it doesn't mean anything to us. And it's like, these guys have seen all the right movies and have no idea how to make the

right stuff. Yeah. I think they're almost overwhelmed by choice. I think they're almost overwhelmed by having essentially an unlimited budget, having these two blockbuster movie stars, having these locations and these sets and these ideas. And even within that shootout, there's actually like a sub kind of set piece of Gosling is handcuffed to the railing.

He gets sort of detained by the police and gets handcuffed for some reason to like a park bench or like a railing of a in a park and is essentially like trying to get free as all of these contract killers and cops descend on him and it is in of itself like a very cool like almost john woo-esque idea of like oh what if this guy has to shoot with one hand and he can't really reload? And when does he shoot the handcuffs off versus when he would just try and save random civilians and stuff like that? But it's so busy. And the thing that I kept thinking about this movie is it's a really bad hat on a hat movie. Every time you think like, you guys got it.

Here it is right here. They add another element on it, whether it's another origin story or another original trauma or this young girl who gets introduced in the first act is all of a sudden like, that's why Ryan Gosling is doing what he's doing. He's the protector of this child. There's every single time you get

any equilibrium with this movie, they get bored by their own movie. Yes. And you can tell because they keep loading the movie up with overqualified actors What's Alfre Woodard doing this movie?

in underwritten parts. Yeah. Here's a quick rundown of the cast of this movie. We mentioned Gosling and Evans and Anna de Armas. Jessica Henwick who's a very talented

young actor who is basically in like one of the more thankless roles I can remember. Yeah, kind of like the stepped on third in command of the CIA group.

Chris Evans like, you can't do this, but never like does anything. Terrible. No sense of humor whatsoever. Regé-Jean Page, who emerged from Bridgerton to become a really exciting young actor. I have never seen Bridgerton and I thought he was absolutely terrible in this movie. And it's nothing against him. But again, a very poorly written part. Acted very, very one-dimensionally.

Like just pure, this guy is evil and there's nothing interesting about this. So there's also like a lot of, did they shoot all this guy's scenes in 10 days? Totally. And then he never saw anyone else? Because he does a lot of stuff sitting in his office on the phone. And so you're kind of like, do you know what movie Chris Evans is in? Yes. Or what movie Ryan Chris Evans is in? Yes. Or what movie Ryan Gosling is in?

Wagner Mora is also in this movie. Yeah, he's actually pretty good. He's pretty funny. A lot of the sort of makeup and, you know, visual, the way he's dressed and the way that his character is constructed, I think,

is playing a part in that. He's kind of like subverting his own persona in the movie. You mentioned Avri Woodard. Billy Bob Thornton, who doesn't even really make very many movies anymore, has a huge persona in the movie. You mentioned Avri Woodard. Billy Bob Thornton, who doesn't even really make very many movies anymore, has a huge part in this movie,

wearing a very bad hairpiece. Sure. Maybe self-consciously. Shea Whigham gets one scene. Yep. This is a fairly long movie, so it's hard to imagine it was cut for time.

Julia Butters. Oh, yeah. Who is the breakout star of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and was widely acclaimed as one of the great young child actors to come along in a long time is cast in this movie.

I think she's pretty good. She actually is. I think she's a very good actor. But she is playing the dumbed down version of the Shane Black kid in every movie. But she's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It's not just that she's the niece

of Billy Bob Thornton's exiled CIA chief. Classic. Hate when that happens. And that she is now his responsibility because her parents have died. Yep.

It's also that she has a pacemaker. So it's like, what was the, who were the seven people in a focus group screening who were like, God, you know what? This kid who's the seven people in a focus group screening who were like god you know what this kid who's in the middle of an international siege the stakes just aren't high

enough man yeah can we have her heart fucking explode like what's going on can we carve one of her eyes out and give her a reading disability you know like i just the whole thing is just uh it's way over the top she She's also super into vinyl. Like, she's really into, like, old records. Yeah, like nine-year-olds are, you know, with pacemakers. Normal stuff. Like, are they, are we being punked? I don't know.

Are they like, you guys don't get it, we're in the eighth dimension of self-awareness now? No, because if it was, there's a scene in the beginning of this movie where Billy Bob Thornton visits Ryan Gosling's character in prison. So the whole idea of the gray man is that it's a program, the Sierra program, where they go and take people out of penitentiaries and put them to work as international assassins, as you do. And he asks Ryan Gosling a question and Gosling just gives him some smart ass answer. And Billy Bob Thornton goes like, oh, so you're glib.

Like, that's your thing. Yes. That's the movie's thing. Like, everything in the movie where you would have been able to have either, like, a legitimately scary moment, a legitimately, like, thrilling moment, a legitimately funny moment,

a legitimately moving moment is then sort of upended or subverted by something that's just basically glib, you know, like even there, there are full on advanced interrogation moments in this movie where Chris Evans is fucking torturing guys. And it's just jokes. It's just jokes while he's doing it.

And it's like, okay, this is the kind of movie you're making to make last boy scout, like make an actually deplorable movie. But then you've got this pacemaker kid in i agree with you that's sort of what bothers me about it is they're acknowledging their own tone they're telling us we've seen all these movies before so you know that this only has one way to end we're not going to be willing to take any chances. And I think the provenance of Netflix is a little bit of a hang-up here too. And this is really starting to infect some of the conversations that we've been having about movies.

We did an episode about this recently about another Netflix movie and like what Netflix movies are now. And at a certain point, you just kind of have to look at the people that are greenlighting or pushing these movies forward and saying like so this is your taste so these are the movies that you want to make you guys want to make red letter or whatever red notice yeah like you think red notice is what people want and maybe the data does in fact tell you that it's what people want but this is yet another deeply expensive netflix movie that is not doing what Stranger Things is doing. Let's say for the sake of argument, and this isn't even the case, I don't believe,

but for the sake of argument that the level of engagement with this film can be equated somehow to the level of engagement proportionally speaking to Stranger Things. Sure.

Not as many viewing hours, not as many seasons and time spent, but that this is the biggest movie of the year for them against the biggest TV show of the year for them. It's a whole world of Stranger Things engagement. Kids are dressing up for Halloween.

I can guarantee you that people have a deeper relationship with Stranger Things than they will ever have with this movie. Even though there was a very quick announcement this week that this film is getting a sequel. So this is where we start to get into like, I think I had a little bit of this hang up coming out of Thor too. You know, I was talking with Andy on the watch about it and I just don't want to be that

guy. Like, I don't want to get too old for this shit. And I think part of the problem is that like the more and more it, this is it. This is what's on TV. This is what's on the big screen. Like you start to just feel more and more marginalized so that you're like, I don't want to come out of every one of these things

and just be like, that was actually garbage. That wasn't even just brainless or fun. I don't really think I'm going to think about it much, but sure, it was cool. It's actually offensive, but now I wonder whether or not there's been enough of this stuff that people Bobby's age, maybe not Bobby's been enough of this stuff that like people

Bobby's age maybe not Bobby's age but like teenagers might just be like that's what movies are like I'm a little worried about that I also think that there are at the risk of being a little bit too navel gazing people are probably listening to us go on about this and saying like I just watched this movie and I had my phone

in my hand and it was fine you know what it was totally fine that's actually the problem is it's not the biggest piece of shit. I actually don't necessarily agree with how severe Adam's take on the film was. Oh, on The Ringer, yeah. I saw it in a movie theater, which is a bigger and better experience,

obviously, than seeing it at home. And I thought it was okay. Like, subpar but not awful. And that's really the issue is these are all the best people. Ryan Gosling hasn't made a movie in five years. This is the movie he came out of the woodwork for. Yeah.

And it's okay. It's like, eh. And Chris Evans was like, I know it was Captain America, but I'll play a complete psychopath who looks like I'm at the fucking Charlottesville rally. Like, he definitely makes a choice in how he's presenting himself in this movie.

There's elements of it that are cool. I laughed at a lot of the dialogue. I actually was able to describe pretty minutely the mechanics of a set piece that they have here. It's memorable in that way. Yeah, exactly. And all of the bones of this movie are movies that I like. But that's the problem. It's bones with no skin, heart, or soul.

It's just a blueprint. Yeah. It's not a movie. And that's actually what's so painful about it. And part of the thing that's funny is that the expectations are very high for a movie like this. As you said, it's very expensive. It's on the biggest streaming service.

It has huge movie stars. It's from the guys who gave you Endgame. All that stuff comes loaded in when you go in. And the same is not true for some of the movies we'll celebrate here. In fact, we probably love some of the movies that'll be in this conversation because there's no expectation for them because they don't have to be that good, you know, and they can kind of catch you by surprise.

And that's, there's no way to account for that in having a conversation about a film's quality because it's not an objective chart that allows us to describe them. But I know when I feel something and I know when I don't. Yeah, and I think that one of the biggest things that we'll probably talk about with this subgenre is the transporting feeling, the escapist feeling of being swept away to this other place.

And I'm sure that they went to many of the locations. I think this movie is very quick to brandish all of its Bangkok, Chiang Mai like Prague, Vienna, this, that, like they were the globetrotting nature of the- Azerbaijan. Yeah. But if I told you they shot this entire thing in the volume in Manhattan Beach,

would you think I was kidding? Nope. Yeah. No, because it mostly looks fake. And frankly, it's moving too fast. It's not, the camera is moving too aggressively through any cityscape to give you any feel for what the city represents or means to the story. It's not about the camera is moving too aggressively through any cityscape to give you any feel for what the city represents or means to the story.

It's not about where we are. It's about how we're trying to get out of where we are all the time. And like, again, we're not talking about like tone poems. We're like, Sean, I like the ambulance. We loved ambulance. But part of it is because I was like, oh, that's the 110. Yeah, sure. That's a place that I understand.

Let's talk about Gosling quickly before we move on to the sub. Yeah, sure. That's a place that I understand. Let's talk about Gosling quickly before we move on to the subcategory. Okay. I really, really love him. I've always loved him. I've always loved particularly the shtick

in fact that he's kind of doing in this movie which is like I've seen all the movies. I know about all the great screen legends. Being taciturn is kind of a move

and being over it is kind of a move and I'm going to use it to my strength. You know, I'm going to make drive or place beyond the pines and I'm going to think about iconography. I'm going to think about reserve as an emotional power. He's usually had, if not great taste,

idiosyncratic and interesting taste as an actor. Now, he's made this film, which we've just dissected and not said very kind things about. And his next movie is Barbie. He's already on a press tour as Ken. What's going on in your mind with Ryan Gosling?

I have to reserve judgment until Barbie comes out, which is not something that 44-year-old men should be saying. But it is kind of hard to... You should do a solo big picture pod on Barbie. But it is pretty hard to be like I'm out on this Greta Gerwig movie before it comes out. Yeah, I'm sure Barbie's gonna be fun. And I'm sure it's gonna be like this incredible

subtextual reading of masculinity and femininity and capitalism and all this other stuff. That's not what I'm asking. Yeah. You don't have to pre-review Barbie. Okay. What's going on with Ryan Gosling? I don't know because I think what he's trying to do is he's like, you know who's really cool

is Bruce Willis. I want to make a Bruce Willis movie. And I think he's definitely going for that. Like, gets thrown out of a fucking building, lands, goes like,

and then he's just like, oh God, you know, it's like a real like, I picked, I sure picked a- Did you do ADR for this one? No, but it's like, I picked the wrong day

to stop smoking kind of movie. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I don't know how, I think this. Did you do ADR for this one? No, but it's like, I picked the wrong day to stop smoking kind of movie. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I don't know how. I think this is another thing. It's like, he has a certain punk rock vibe to his career. And it's hard for me to understand how he could, with a straight face, do the like,

the reason why I'm in prison is because I had an abusive dad who was threatening my brother. And so I killed him. And then I became an assassin because of the Sierra program and like do that whole scene having made Place Beyond the Pines. Have you seen Murder by Numbers? Yeah.

So if anybody listening to this hasn't seen it, it is ostensibly a very down the middle psychological thriller from 2002, 20 years ago, starring Sandra Bullock. It also stars Ryan Gosling. It's directed by Barbe Schroeder, who directed Reversal of Fortune. He's a very good filmmaker. And it's sneakily the formation, the formulation of the Gosling persona, which is, even in that movie, he's doing like a fine-grained combination of bruce willis and kevin spacey but at age like 21 yeah where he's like i'm smarter than everybody in the room

i can withstand anything i'm an arch manipulator and i'm very very handsome and i know it but i'm not toxic and weird i'm just a little dangerous. And this movie, I'm like, you told us all this so long ago. Like, how can this possibly be interesting to you

as, and maybe it's not. Maybe it's very financially solvent. Sure. Maybe those checks clear and that's part of it. And you know what?

People do that. I just, he hasn't struck me as the kind of person who does that there's just too many things in this movie where i'm like they're in bangkok and i'm like this dude made the craziest sickest movie about bangkok yeah and now he's just like yeah okay guys i want to turn the lights out and get neon sure when are we doing only god forgives in the rewatchables

the last the last episode maybe that'll be my 50th birthday pick. I dare you. I truly dare you. Shall we pivot to Special Ops? Yeah, is there anything... I mean, how do you feel about in the same way that we have the next three years of the big picture plotted out in terms of MCU releases?

Oh my God. Having a Grayman extended universe to grapple with. I feel like shit. Yeah. I don't want to get too deep into the MCU thing, but I was not feeling, I was not swelling with anticipation.

Yeah. Thinking about having to check out Ironheart episode seven. What do you think the spinoff of this is going to be? Butters? Butters, just try it. Deep Julia Butters? Just Butters, like with the pacemaker. Is she going to be like, are they going to do Butters

but it's going to kind of be like Crank like the Jason Statham movie? If her heart rate goes over a certain her pacemaker that would be pretty good. She has to just stay chill.

I don't know. I I'm I'm a little dismayed. Grandmantoo it's fine. It's not it's not a big deal. Everybody should get paid

and be happy and make the stuff they want to make I don't really have an issue with that I think I'm more just lamenting my station in life at the moment

where I'll be talking about Greyman 2 with you in 26 months and Bobby will you be there? I certainly hope so unless you have some news for me I just mean like will you have seen

Greyman 1 will you be participating in the discourse? Did you fire this up? Is it a requirement of being the producer of Big Picture to have seen

Grey Man 1 by then let's make it one when you listen to this do we sound like we're like Statler and Waldorf or do we sound you sound

you sound like what it feels like to see a new movie come across on Netflix just no I have no desire to watch it based on

when I turn it on and it's blaring the trailer at me and I just don't understand why it was I just don't understand why it was made. I don't understand why hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on these movies. He summed up what we have

been feeling in three sentences. It's a challenge. I don't get the sense it's going to improve. Although, you know, the big reckoning and the stock price and all the challenges that the services had this year maybe will lead to something. But they're not going to go back to making Duplass Brothers movies. No. They're just going to be like, we're going to cut all the middle shit out and we will lead to something. But they're not going to go back to making Duplass Brothers movies. No. They're going to go back to,

they're just going to be like, we're going to cut all the middle shit out and we're going to make blockbusters. And Stranger Things. And Stranger Things. I like Stranger Things though, guys. I like Stranger Things too.

I enjoyed it. I have not finished it. I didn't think it was good, but I enjoyed it. It felt like cool to be watching something while other people were watching it. So if that's what they were going

for this movie, then it's a weird fucking choice to make it like you're describing, depressing and weird. But from its inception as a streaming service, this service has been good at making TV shows. House of Cards was a good TV show. They've not really been good at making movies.

And they're not giving up the ghost. You know, they're continuing on because I guess it, I mean, here we are creating shoulder content for their product. Yeah, well, we'll do some value add here now. Okay, let's get excited. Let's take a quick break

and then we'll come back and we'll talk about the good shit. Say hello to Tim Selects, Tim's everyday value menu. Enjoy the new spinach and feta savory egg pastry or our roasted red pepper and swiss pinwheel starting at only 2.99 plus tax try one or try our full tim selects lineup terms apply prices may vary at participating restaurants in canada it's time for tim's okay we're back so would you say we were hunting for a new yeah because i tried to get you to talk about the terminal list so yes we have been hunting for this another show i have not watched

i was just like hey just so you know some stuff to like in this um is that show a similar vibe yes is it better than the gray man yeah in a sense in that I mean like it's pretty morbid you know it's it's like it's way more 80s action movie than in reality than this is

even though this I think sort of aspires to have some elements of 80s action blockbusters this is like Terminalist is like Chris Pratt

is a seal something goes wrong on an op and when he comes back his family gets killed and then he has to go and find out both why his family got killed and what happened. Is it Tom Clancy?

No, it might as well. That's very Tom Clancy. Yes, and it's like Taylor Kitsch is his Mr. Clark, like his sidekick. Interesting. Yeah. Now, did you grow up reading these kinds of books? I think I read like one or two Clancy's,

and I have been like, it's way more of a movie thing for me though it's not like I don't read a lot of like special forces stuff I mean there's but you love spy fiction yeah but all of my favorite spy books are this guy works in like a newspaper and then gets either drafted into the resistance against Hitler or like this person is essentially a librarian but brings down the KGB, like that kind of stuff. Okay, I have a related question then. Do you like those books because you imagine yourself?

No, they're just really atmospheric. I don't really aspire. I'm not picking on you. I want to know. No, but that's why they're so relatable. It's like, I think when you watch something in a movie, it's why some of the Le Carre adaptations have not always been so successful.

So much of like what happens in those books is someone thinking through something. And that's very hard to depict cinematically. When it comes to the movies, I'm like, show me Ronan. This is exactly the kind of point that a podcaster turned spy would make about spy novels.

I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Very fair point. Very fair point. What an amazing double life I'd be living. Where did you go this weekend? And I was like, yeah I'm just saying. Very fair point. Very fair point. What an amazing double life I'd be leading. Where did you go this weekend? And I was like, yeah, I was busy. But I've made this point.

You're weird about this stuff sometimes. No, I'm not. You will withhold stuff from me. And I'm like, did you murder a man this weekend? And just not, like, you can tell me. You can trust me with the info. I saw Marcel Dechelle. I don't know what you want from me.

I heard about that on a podcast. Okay. Situ a podcast. Okay. Situate us. Okay. Help us understand. How do we know we're watching one of these movies? Yeah, I have seven rules. We can also throw some amendments into these,

but this is the sort of commandments of subcontractorship. You can also call this, you know, I think that there's a slight difference between international espionage and this because a slight difference between international espionage and this because like i said international espionage i think of more as like um say spy game like you know real like trade craft but not as militaristic as the stuff that we're talking about a lot of this is disgraced ex-military ex-cia guys who are working somewhere in the world and now are just taking money jobs,

but maybe there's one more out there to write the ledger that they have with the universe. But they are somehow, in shadowy terms, connected to official organizations. There is something behind almost all of these groups that is the real money. And there's one person in the Senate or the vice president or somebody, the head of the CIA who's pushing this agenda. Yes. And they, gray man actually has a pretty good setup in that regard where it's like, there is this one program in the CIA that Billy Bob Thornton shepherded. And then there's like the Lloyd Chris Evans side, which is non-governmental and somehow not governed by the rules of man or god he just goes off menu killing people um so let's how do you know you're watching a subcontractor special ops shit movie

lay it on me you've got you've got the the rules of order does it seem like the actor spent as much if not more time doing tactical training as they did rehearsing uh you know you're watching one of these movies if there is a breach scene you can always tell the level of like yeah we really did a lot of work on the range and just getting the choreography down knowing how to go through a door

my instructor actually told me he shows my tape to incoming seals now so it's pretty cool there are always more than three making of featurettes on every DVD of these films. And at least two of them. We were out in the Mojave just kind of getting used to it.

Yeah. And they're always called like tools of war. Yeah. How six men learn to destroy each other. And it's really funny because like when those guys are all doing like their interview for like Collider, they're like, yeah, you know, it's a good story. And then when really funny because like when those guys are all doing like their interview for like Collider, they're like, yeah, you know,

it's a good story. And then when they, they asked them about like the training, they're like, let me tell you about my training, sir. So yeah,

you can tell often, it's hard to like say this on a podcast because you have to see it, but there is a certain way that guys hold guns now where they have it close up to their chest

so that they can like maneuver really quick. I'm like oh yeah you guys all went and saw the same swing coach the Dale Dyed machine exactly rule two are there at least three international locations with at least one being a flex

just like this is real Mission Impossible shit where like he has to go get a MacGuffin and it's at the top of the Burj Khalifa like you just want to throw one in there that geographically even, this is just way too much time in airplanes for these guys. And are said locations introduced with a drone shot and a title

card? Well, this is very common, especially in the last five or six years. Prior to this, it was just hard cuts with big helicopter shots. Maybe a guy walking in front of the Eiffel Tower and you're like, oh, it must be in Paris yes I don't

I'm not crazy about where all this is going I feel like we're moving too fast I feel like we need to be like this movie is set in in Iran and we have to stay here

and it's it's gonna be intense as opposed to like I don't really know other than it just being fun for the filmmakers why are do you think that

audiences are impressed by this? I have two very cynical responses to this. One is, Tax credits? Or just another like, you know, this features some stuff in France, so maybe the French people will watch this on Netflix.

Oh God. Okay. But do the French people think that? No one's like, oh, Azerbaijan. No, they're fucking at the Cinematheque seeing the mule.

That's right. Like a restored version of the mule. God bless them for supporting clint and then one of the things that is driving me absolutely batshit watching star wars and marvel stuff right now is like a person's on like a completely different planet and then they just show up right in time oh yeah and so like the idea of like you're you're in kevin smith and clerk's territory, but the idea that it might take some time to get from one place to another, like the whole fucking second act of new hope is just like, well, it's going to take a while to get there.

Oh, that's true. So let's chat about some stuff. So you want some practicality, some travel time. You want to, you want to see these guys consulting ways. Nobody anywhere can convince me that we need as many planets as we do.

I'm serious in fucking the, my favorite Star Wars movie of the last, like the last batch was Rogue One. There's like eight planets. We're like, well, we got to go to this other one. That's the mining planet. And then we got to go to this one where it's like this. Fuck off. Come on.

This is why Maverick was so good. It was literally timed. We don't even know where Maverick's set. It's San Diego and Iranistan. Like nobody knows where that is. You're in hottest take territory. So you might want to back set. It's San Diego and Iranistan. Nobody knows where that is. You're in hottest take territory, so you might want to back pocket there's too many planets. Just hold that for the future.

Should I cut that out? No, no. I like it. It's all one pod. It'll be a great book. It's all one pod. Yeah, this is an issue because I don't think that the audience is responding to these choices the way the filmmakers are. and that shows a disconnect between what people want like I've never

ever had a conversation after seeing a movie going back to the 80s and the 90s where someone said it's so cool that they went to Germany yeah who gives a shit right like think about the firstborn movie and how they go across Europe like and how like she picks him

up and he's in Marseille or wherever they are and he's like, God, I got to get out of here. And the journey that they go on so that you believe that this woman would actually risk her life for this guy by the end of the movie. You never ever get that sense in this movie.

You're just like, it starts in Thailand. There's an explosion over Azerbaijan. He somehow gets to Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic. movie like you're just like it starts in Thailand there's an explosion over Azerbaijan he somehow gets to Austria Germany Czechoslovakia like the Czech Republic yeah like it's just crazy um the third one is probably my favorite element of all these movies uh this is a really really deep-bored legacy cut but is there at least one scene set in a room that could be described as a crisis suite and this is uh people

working in said suite do they seemingly have access to every camera on the planet yep and do they have control over quote integrated grids and comms which is what edward norton says he needs in in born legacy he stands up he's like i need a crisis suite i can't work here i need i need us to be up somewhere and i need integrated grids and comms. And the sickest part about that is they set up shop in like a pharmaceutical company. It's so dark. So integrated grids and comms

is how I think of preparing the letterbox lists before recordings. And then the comms is the podcasts. So I, in a way, I'm kind of operating in a crisis suite. I just fucking love whenever anybody can just like watch the movie that we're watching

on like a bad monitor and just be like where is he? Where is he? Did we lose him? And then they're always Enhance! Zoom!

There was no camera on that alley. It's like really? Every time we've ever enhanced it's always just like you press the space bar and all of a sudden it's just like a rack focus

zoom right in. Picture perfect. Where's that technology? This is also something that's quickly getting I feel like Corey rack focus zoom right in. Picture perfect. Where's that technology? This is also something that's quickly getting I feel like Corey McConnell could use that technology. But this is quickly getting

like completely obviated by Google Maps where it's like I can look and see what's next to that taco stand right now. Right. And it's like

but in these movies you need like you need Josh Hamilton to like tap into like the telecom system of Germany so that they can see what's going on. What do you call the crisis suite in your home? Like which room would be the crisis suite?

That's the bedroom, man. Yeah. Insofar as it's where all the nightmares happen or we need to get several groups of men and women to take care of elaborate activities. That's where I do all my thinking about Joan Allen. Sorry. Okay, number four. groups of men and women to take care of elaborate activities? That's where I do all my thinking about Joan Allen. Yeah. Sorry. Okay, number four. Sorry to my wife and Joan Allen. Number four.

Does someone do work for a super secret government initiative often named the blank program? So, Treadstone, Blackbriar,

Outcome, those are the fucking Ivy Leagues. Yep. Sierra Program, and Gray Man, give me a break not great you know so before this

film was released when we only had a trailer lots of listeners of the show who watched the trailers thought that characters were saying that this was called the CR program

yes I'm gonna let them think that okay just to throw the scent off the fact that there is a CR program and we do some of our best work fact that there is a CR program. And we do some of our best work in Azerbaijan. This is a good one.

Now, on the one hand, this feels like movie magic, right? The idea of like all these elaborate programs. On the other hand, this is really how our government works. I mean, this is not necessarily so far-fetched that all of these, you know, shadow operations are. I would love to say, hey, Sean, I think you're reading too much into it, but didn't John Bolton just be like, I've done coups? He literally said that. This wasn't a coup. I've participated in many coups.

Okay. What's next? Do you wish John Bolton was in this chair right now? Do you think he would have had better? I wouldn't be getting as much truth as I'm getting right now about your crisis suite, that's for sure. Number five, is our assassin killer

betrayed by their government, their handler, their fixer, their armorer, their forger, or their love interest? Of course. One of the movies

that we're going to shout out here, Day of the Jackal, some really good betrayals by the forger. In the remake of Day of the Jackal it's the armorer who does it yes that's the Jackal starring Bruce Willis yes and in uh in Gray Man Wagner Mora starts as a I guess friendly face and he's just like yeah I just work for money and I get you a new identity in five minutes and all this stuff that's actually

my favorite scene in the movie the whole like their interaction there's like a slight Pablo Escobar joke thrown in there yeah and then the trap door there's literally a trap door and it felt like one of the only old school conventions in movies like this you know it's like that could have happened in a Sean Connery movie in 1972 and I like that about it yes and there's elements to that that that's the kind of movie that I'm like you guys should have just made this this would have been cool it's like what happens when the water is filling up this well and like he's gonna have to blow up the glass that's cool like i'm watching that do you understand the science of that explosion i didn't can things explode underwater that are jerry-rigged with like bubble gum and brian gosling's hair gel how did he survive i don't know anyway um number six is

there an even deadlier assassin that makes our assassins seem morally favorable in comparison? I love this one. So this is the Carl Urban, Clive Owen-born movies. Chris Evans, obviously, in Gray Man

is just supposed to be such a piece of shit that we don't think about the fact that Sierra Six has probably killed like 50 guys. You know, like... Yeah, he is a man who murdered his father,

went to prison, and got out because the CIA wanted him to run across the world killing people. Yeah, and so I think that this is always like a very interesting element to these movies. And this can be used in Hitman movies, like in Gross Point Blank, like Dan Aykroyd is supposed to be the thing that makes John Cusack seem like that's relatable um but i think my favorite even briefly is clive owen from

the born movie um just like his professor character who shows up out of nowhere this is a great call there's only one more rule before we do some celebrating uh this is very specific you have to really be deep in the in the tape for this one does a character perform surgery on themselves or instruct an unqualified bystander on how to perform said surgery so this happens in gray man this uh happens in the born movies and this happens famously in ronin uh but it is always like he's in a farmhouse or he's in a veterinarian's office or he's in something and he's like grabbing epi pens and gauze and scissors and is like oh can you bring your model train microscope over here so i can see the bullet wound in my liver like i'll also subcategory really love when guys can identify that they have missed an artery they're

like oh thank god it didn't hit my kidney or my liver it went right through it's like oh you're good then i have a question for you yeah if called upon would you remove a bullet from the fleshy part of my inner thigh not arterialial, right? Not arterial. No spray here. It's just, it's lodged. I'm in extraordinary pain. Yeah. I can't walk.

What are my tools? What do I got? A number two pencil. Like, are we at Major Domo? What do we have? Like, what do I have to work with here? A number two pencil? That would be amazing if like cause of death like

extreme sepsis from dirty tools used to get this well uh we're in a target okay but we're being pursued okay so you've got to wheel me around and remove the bullet but you have every tool you could possibly imagine at your disposal will you do it or would you just leave me behind and bail no but i would probably get distracted by the flat screen TVs for a second and just be like, oh, that resolution's really... Every time I'm in a Target and I see the Blu-ray stand, and there's only like 18 Blu-rays and they're all movies that have come out in the last 18 months, and they're all like $47. I'm like, I think I should get one of those. Target is... So those are my rules. are many others I'm sure

did you have any that you were thinking of is there anything I missed um I think in these movies the less self aware the better and

that's I mentioned True Lies as kind of an outlier to this I do see it in league with these but for the most part one of the things

that most recommends the Bourne movies I think is that they're like this is serious there's nothing funny about what's going on here. This guy doesn't know who he is and people are trying to kill him. Yeah.

And we need to be as disoriented as he is to be on board with the story, to get excited and to feel the stakes of the story. And I think that this is true of a lot of action filmmaking is we're way beyond the wink zone. Like we're in an uncanny valley and the Marvel movies have been a big participant in this. And folks like Chris Pratt, who apparently is like trying to subvert that with the wink zone. Like we're in an uncanny valley and the Marvel movies have been a big participant in this. Folks like Chris Pratt who apparently is like trying to subvert that

with the terminal list. I think so, yeah. As a performer, he's really... I would say it's like a very dull performance from him considering the fact that

in Guardians, like his whole thing is like wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Which I guess in his mind maybe he's like there's one version of this that's Kurt Russell

and then there's another version of this that's like more Schwarzenegger or more Stallone. But both guys, the thing I like about all of those people that you just mentioned, Stallone a little bit less so, but particularly Kurt Russell and Arnold Schwarzenegger, they can play on both sides of the field. They can do really winky stuff and they can do really, really self-serious stuff. And there's a flexibility there that I appreciate depending on the era, depending on the filmmaker,

depending on the story. The stuff that you, I mean, you like these movies more than I do, but the stuff that you really have your finger on is the stuff that is, it's not trying to do anything other than tell its story. You can do it any way you want. You can do Skyfall or you can do Dr. No, and I'll be there for you. You know what I mean? Like, you just have to choose one. Yeah. So it's really about if the filmmakers

and the people making the movie believe the bullshit, I will believe the bullshit. And if it's like, eh, like, we're just kidding, right? Like, it never really feels right unless it is a send-up. You know what I mean?

Like, it has to be one or the other. Do you feel that Day of the Jackal is the first installment of this kind of movie because it you know you mentioned it already it's very early 1973 i was trying to think about did we have a version of this kind of filmmaking elements of it in some of the um espionage hitchcock movies and even maybe you could say like third man and i'm sure that there's somebody who's like way

smarter about the history of film is like god damn, you guys are not talking about this 1955 movie. But Day of the Jackal is the one that really feels militarized. Day of the Jackal is the one that really feels like there's the entire French military and law enforcement looking for one guy who is easily evading him because he is basically a product of this world. So that's actually the key distinction is because we have like our man in Havana and we have the quiet American. Spio came in from the cold. Yeah.

A lot of Graham Greene stuff is kind of in this mold, but it isn't this like, it isn't artillery. It isn't about weaponry. It isn't about a kind of brute force and it isn't often American. And I feel like a lot of these stories have kind of American origins or they're from American governments that are driving some of the story. And so Day of the Jackal, that is not the case, but it feels like it's from Fred Zinneman, who's the guy who made High Noon. He was one of the American filmmakers of the 50s and 60s. So that's an interesting place

to start. So the thing that Jackal sets up that I really like about these movies is how process driven the best of them are. So a lot of these movies aren't about superheroes. They're about regular people, but they are masters of what they're doing. And so a really good example of this would be like in Born Identity when he gets stuck in the consulate. He's online and then he gets into that fight and he's trying to escape the consulate, even though all these Marines are looking for him. And he like steals a radio, steals a map,

figures out where their fire exits are, turns the fire alarm on. So it's distracting and then climbs out basically and slides down like a water drain pipe in a way that is not, I am a champion athlete. It's just like, I have figured out the logistics and the basically exit routes of this building. And I got out even though these guys are all running around in circles on the inside. Shades of Bronson and the Great Escape.

Day of the Jackal is the same thing. It's just like this, you watch this guy dying his hair. You watch this guy changing his passport. You watch this guy building a gun that can be undetected you watch this guy go on a long form relationship with another man to find the perfect apartment to be situated in for when he's going to try and kill de gaulle like all of it is just like really really like step by step by step process and i think that's where a lot of my like like love for these movies come come from if people haven't seen day the jackal it might be the best movie that we're going to talk about today. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to

descend in quality probably. At times, yeah. The second film that you have on the list is really interesting to me. I watched it actually for the first time a couple of years ago. It's a Sam Peckinpah movie starring the late great James Caan and Robert Duvall. It's called Killer Elite. This is almost exactly this feels more like a blueprint to me with a little bit more like

of the bare knuckled, this is a brutal world stuff that I think I like more in these movies. It's not an elegant movie. It's a hard ham fisted movie. Why do you have it on your list? Because this is the one where it feels like these guys are post-government agency like they're now like these killers for hire out there and on the run and are pretty deplorable people um but like there is an element of almost like post-vietnam like cynicism to the like what they're doing out in the world that I kind of

I kind of dig I don't think it's like a very successful film Khan and Duval are out of their minds in this movie so if you enjoy really jacked up

70s acting by all means check it out there's an incredibly funny scene where somebody gets crabs in this movie and Robert Duval's

response is really his laugh about it is incredible but yeah like I think that this is like the sort of like we're past war now and we're into like, just like all this secret shit happening. So I want to ask you about that.

I think that's a key, key point because there are not a lot of films with this kind of storytelling in the 1980s. And these first two films you mentioned are in the 70s. They're both two films you mentioned are in the 70s. They're both effectively kind of post-Vietnam or at the end of Vietnam. And the idea that a lot of people in the military were sort of hung out to dry by the government, by citizens of our country who were sort of like rejecting veterans coming back from that war,

the idea that that was a kind of a corrupt war and an unjust war. And so that going out for yourself was the only thing you could do in the aftermath of a war like that. And so you could tell stories in the late 70s. And not all stories were about military men, but they were about these kind of like vigilante types and the Charles Bronson death wish stories start to come out. Washed out and marginalized by like their former employees or whatever. The forgotten warriors kind of of our country, of our civilization.

But then in the 80ss i could hardly think of any movies that fit the bill it's just like everybody going after drug dealers or russians why did that change people cared a lot more about drug dealers and russians i don't know i mean like it seems like the cold war weirdly even though it was like some the cold war in the 80s different in it in a different way than in the 50s 60s and 70s seems to have just kind of become like way more good bad like the reagan conception of the cold war is just like we must defeat communism and so like on a lot of like the action movies that you see there is an element of um like contras like you know schwarzenegger has to like go up against a bunch of Nicaraguans

or something like, it's all a lot of that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, you see that in Commando, you see that in Predator for sure, but what I don't understand

is why there was no one who could get a movie made that was about kind of the moral ambiguity of Iran-Contra. Yeah. You know, that idea,

those events or the hostage crisis or any of those things are all like brilliant setups for these kinds of stories like there's a couple of like more domestic thrillers towards the end of the 80s and in there like no way out i think or like the package that are kind of like the military is

after its own here but not in the way that we're talking about where it's like a like and i think the next movie we're going to mention is this, and it's like completely is like the perfect version of this. Okay. What is it? It's Ronan. And so this is about, uh, it's John Frankenheimer's,

um, ultimate car chase movie, ultimate heist movie. And it's De Niro is playing a, is he, or is he not a CIA agent? Um, who is essentially a gun for hire in Europe and gets brought in by,

uh, Natasha McElhone as a, you know, basically an arm of the IRA to steal something from a... It's all MacGuffins. It's like steal the case, get the case from here to there. But there is increasingly, you get the awareness that this guy may or may not be still being controlled by the US government. Who are the other people being controlled by? Who is anybody working for? And are they really as washed up as you think? Ronan is a former rewatchable. It's pretty good.

Do you think that it reannounces this as a subgenre? No, because it's kind of a cult movie. I mean, almost all of these are. There is like a burst around Bourne where there's movies like, what was the George Clooney one? The American, right? Is that the Anton Corbin movie? Yes.

And then also the Hollywood version of that I guess would be like George Clooney and the Peacemaker. Yes. It was like a big one of these although that was like more of a like

I work for the government we're trying to stop a war. Like that, it's like a little bit More big top plain spoken action. Yeah. But I think that around Bourne people start to try

and figure out in some ways John Wick is just like an extension of born you know like in a lot of ways like this idea of like a guy who's just like a samurai in the modern world do you

wield a peacemaker in your crisis suite sorry born changed everything how so I think it changed action movies and I think it definitely changed people's conception of these kinds I'm sorry. Born changed everything though. How so? I think it changed action movies. And I think it definitely changed people's conception of these kinds of movies

and like espionage movies and spy movies. It was, I think, still legitimately like the American Bond. Like I think it was the perfect all-American relatable actor who also could believably pull off like I know Kung Fu and I can just take out, like, a whole cadre of people, like, in a room. And it actually had, like, a really interesting and heart, like, the first one especially is a pretty, like, heartwarming story. It's, like, really sweet in some places. And then as they kind of expanded the universe out, I know that I'm one of the rare people who are still, like, all in legacy and like really want to know more about what the nsa was doing and stuff but i think it actually believably had this like sort of mythology underneath of it 2015's jason born was financially successful but not necessarily celebrated do you think kind of reminds me the gray man in that like i was like i've been waiting my fucking 10 years for this to come out and now I didn't like it. It was too much action.

It was just like him fighting. It wasn't like there was no story to it. Yeah. It's interesting. One other thing I've noticed about the Russos now that you mentioned that

is they're especially when you look at Extraction which they produced a film that they participated I think co-wrote maybe Joe Russo co-wrote it is that they are also

really into hand-to-hand action and it feels a little bit like you said post john wick we're trying to show people how severe some of this stuff can be but also like entertaining and funny and a little bit of john woo and a little bit of jackie chan but also like this sort of like brutalist scott adkins michael j white stuff like but none of it feels organic to any of the story. It's like, would these guys really be the greatest hand-to-hand combat fighters? Like, why would, was Ryan Gosling, like, trained to be, in Krav Maga?

No, like, this has, and I think that that's the kind of, like, they want the cake and eat it too thing, where it's like, at any moment, any of these guys could be, like, killed. You know, like, somebody could just turn around and be like, bang. Right, shoot him in the head. But it's like, let's get, these guys could be like killed you know like somebody could just turn around and be like bang but it's like let's get

let's get these guys fighting in a fountain you know old school like and it's just sort of this is this is not the movie that we're watching

anyhow what's next we can run through some of these Body of Lies I just wanted to shout out as a good I mean he is in the CIA

but it has a good handler the Russell Crowe character in Body of Lies who just good handler the Russell Crowe uh character in Body of Lies who just essentially does the entire movie uh on an early bluetooth I I recall this very well I have a really important question for you sure am I your handler or or are you mine or is Bobby ours I feel like I'm both of your handlers I think that's probably true I mean I can I could easily betray you though trust me I think you and I trade off roles. I think that there are times

where you come to me for counsel. You call me. I'm like, I'm at a birthday party. What do you need? You know? And I got you on my Bluetooth. You're on my AirPods. But I know you're not actually

at a birthday party. And you're like, I need extraction! Shit went wrong! I hope to one day make that call. Body of Lies is cool. Sicario Day of the Soldado is pretty key text here

in terms of just absolutely... Be careful what you wish for, Chris Ryan, because if you wanted somebody to do this stuff and be serious about it, just know that that means Josh Brolin torturing a guy and then blowing up his family

to find out about where drug dealers smuggled a terrorist across the border. Yeah. means Josh Brolin like torturing a guy and then blowing up his family to find out about like where drug dealers smuggled a terrorist across the border. Yeah. This was an interesting test of our moral grit I

would say. This is half half of this movie is subcontractor shit and then it turns into a Western. Yeah. And when it turns into a Western I like both halves

but when it turns into a Western you're like whoa this is really cool like this Benicio Del Toro into a western you're like whoa this is really cool like this Benicio Del Toro basically doing Man With No Name and this is really cool

Stefano Salima is the son of Sergio Salima the great Italian western filmmaker so no surprise there that's a good one

Salima is one of the only active filmmakers in the world who I feel like actually gets what it is that we're talking about here and isn't even necessarily trying to riff on it he's like I feel like actually gets what it is that we're talking about here. Yes.

And isn't even necessarily trying to riff on it. He's like, I'm trying to make something that is beautiful to me. And what is beautiful to me is a guy with a machine gun blowing somebody's body apart. And so he made Without Remorse, which was Michael B. Jordan as, and this is more of a traditional Tom Clancy, like muscular version of what we're talking about, but not a good movie. But it's very much in this vein. Guy without a, like guy kind of what we're talking about but not a good movie but is very much in this vein. Guy without a cut

like guy kind of excommunicated from his country avenging his family all that stuff. What's up with the Rainbow Six universe? So that's supposed to be

Krasinski and Jordan right? In theory. I would watch that movie. Call your guy David Ellison find out what's going on. Isn't that Skydance? Not my guy. We've not spoken

but if you'd like to chat about it I'm available. I keep saying Sean it's time to do the Skydance pod and you won't We've not spoken. But if you'd like to chat about it, I'm available. I keep saying, Sean, it's time to do the Skydance pod and you won't let me do it. What are your favorite? Give me your top 10 Skydance productions right now. I'm saving it for the pod. Would you ever host the official

Skydance pod funded by David Ellison? No, when I turn 50, I'm going to do Terminator Genesis. Was the first Skydance Terminator? I simply couldn't tell you. Okay. Next movie is

a pair of Denzel's, Man on Fire and Safe House. Safe House is actually probably closer to what we're talking about in terms of its moving around. It's Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds

driving around South Africa. Is this Daniel Espinoza? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And honestly, this is actually all I want from Gray Man is a safe house. Yeah. I'm a guy of modest taste at the end of the day.

I'll tell you my safe house story. I moved to Los Angeles in May of 2012. We were fortunate to stay in corporate housing for a short period of time. Shout out to Ten Ten Wilshire. Thank you to ESPN

for that, the Disney Corporation. Found a house in Los Feliz, not far from where you lived and live and fired, got all of our stuff

into the house. First thing I always unpack in my house is my TV. Fired up the TV, connected the cable and saw... She's always like, that's the priority.

I mean, she's the priority, and then number two is TV. She's like, our clothes are on the floor. Can we get a fucking dresser, Sean? I couldn't be bothered with that. We couldn't get any regular cable, but we could get pay-per-view. Cranked on Safe House that night. I was like, I think we're going to watch this movie, Safe House.

She didn't enjoy it. She did not appreciate that that's how we spent our first night in that home. Like the scene from Breaking Bad where they set up beach chairs and just watch TV. Yeah, it was like that, but minus all the drug dealing. And so my memory of it is that Eileen is mad at me. Not of any movie. Okay. Although it was made by the guy who made Snobby Cash.

So, you know. It's a pretty cool movie, actually. It's not a bad Denzel. It's way better than Two Guns. May on Fire is obviously like a superior film. It's Tony Scott. It's in Mexico. It's this guy who's like ex-CIA who's now been relegated to being a bodyguard. Kind of has a little bit of the like same gray man, you know, he's protecting a child in that protection. He's going to find redemption for past sins, yada, yada. But I, you can't go wrong with either of these. The next one to me is the ultimate example of this, but I don't like it.

No, but it is kind of everything we're saying. So this is mile 22, which was also supposed to be Pete Berg's like first film in a series of movies that was going to be about these super soldiers who were essentially a wet work team that operated only under John Malkovich's supervision. Really weird movie.

It was supposed to be a Ronda Rousey movie. Then Mark Wahlberg was going to be the bad guy in it. Then he's just the star. It is super strange. There are elements of this movie where it's like, what's wrong with Mark Wahlberg's character? There's all this weird stuff with his OCD.

I loved it. I really enjoyed watching this movie. It is truly like, it has no redeeming qualities, but I really enjoyed it. It is one of the first big Hollywood movies for Eco UAE.

Isn't this also a Netflix movie? It's not a Netflix movie. Though it sort of feels like one. It's STX Entertainment funded this film. Oh yeah.

My guys. Your guys. Also stars Lauren Cohen from The Walking Dead. She's good in this. She's pretty good. Malkovich is unbelievable in this. This movie is really bad. Yeah. I's good in this. She's pretty good. Malkovich is unbelievable in this.

This movie is really bad. Yeah. I have a lot of time for Pete Berg movies, especially Pete Berg movies where he's like, this movie is about a guy with a machine gun and he's going to kick doors in or he's going to race down a mountain. But this one, man, it let me down.

Now we start to get into this genre, this sub-genre being really pretty far down the food chain so you haven't mentioned any and you're not going to mention any liam neeson movies do you feel like any of those movies feel more like the death wish dirty harry like man against an army thing to me and even though they have an international espionage or international intrigue element there's something about it that's like, oh, you fucked with an assassin. You shouldn't have done that. Got it.

Okay. I would love to see a movie with the Taken character not protecting his daughter. Okay. Or wife, if it was just like, oh, this is another job he has to do. But then we get into the real B movies here. The Mechanic, this Ben Foster movie

from a couple of years ago. The Gunman, or The Gunman, which is how I kind of was saying it for a while. I don't know why. Are we sure it's The Gunman? Well, what is it?

Well, this is... There's only two options. We're in like Spider-Man, Phil Spider-Man territory here from Seinfeld. I don't... I was like,

hey, did you see that Sean Penn movie? And you were like, yeah. And I was like, what was it called again? You would say. It's styled as The Gunman. G-U-N-M-A-N, one word.

Okay. So not The Gunman. I know. But The Gunman. The Gunman makes guns. The Gunman kills people with a gun. Okay, well, that's what he does. And he.

This isn't a movie about a guy who makes guns. I got to admit, i've kind of forgotten what this movie is about but i remember really liking javier bardem in it uh-huh and isn't he like an ex-assassin who's now masquerading as like an aid worker you always at the end of episodes like this sound like someone with a head injury because you've said so many words that are just mean the same thing i'm like i don't remember what this film is about here's the plot uh we can go to our our next two which is the the michael bay double feature of 13 hours and six underground 13 hours obviously a quote-unquote true story yeah right uh certainly features some subcontractors six underground more of an action movie but still like the same idea

of like a program of international ghost thieves who do shit. So I liked this movie a lot in part because I'm a Bay apologist, but also in part because I think it may seem like a bit of a contradiction the way that the self-awareness of that movie was amusing to me and the self-awareness of the Greyman I found annoying.

I saw Six Underground almost entirely, which was written by Wernick and Reese, who wrote Deadpool, as a full-blown self-terrorism of Michael Bay movies. It was like actively, it was like the naked gun,

but for Michael Bay. That was how I saw it. This movie is, like, Gray Man is not that. I don't think the rest of America, outside of me and you

and Zach and Amanda, when we saw it on a big screen, thought of Six Underground that way. And then me harassing Bobby to be we saw it on a big screen thought of Six Underground that way. And then me harassing Bobby to be like, it's midnight,

have you started Six Underground yet? He made me watch it at midnight when it premiered on Netflix. I didn't make you do anything. I was just letting you know that it was on. This was like 2018.

It was like when Chris suggested I watch something, I kind of felt the pressure to watch it. That's true. Not like now, he can ignore you, whole cloth.

Now I can betray you as your handler. I had a strong feeling people weren't going to love that movie, but I did not expect them to completely reject it. Now, I like Six Underground. This year we got a movie that I was hoping we were going to be able to make an episode about that was released in like 14 movie theaters and then Amazon right? on VOD yeah

and now it's on like Paramount or Amazon I don't know The Contractor we're talking about right I all the old Knives movie so Chris Pine just made

like two movies he made two movies that are similarly in the same genre realm I would say and The Contractor is one of them

this movie is directed by Tarek Sala has a lot of style it is right down the middle version of what we're discussing it is the most recent version of what we're talking about other than Greyman

all the old knives Greyman or Greyman it's a great point maybe we've been getting it wrong yeah the Greyman yeah all the old knives is also a spy thriller in a way. It's more about a relationship between two people.

It's more Le Carre-ish. Yes. But he seems to be in a zone right now. I'm not sure why that is. The contractor, through the first hour, I was like, we did it. Yeah. We got it. We got the one.

Got Kiefer Sutherland on a Bluetooth. Yes. As one of these like. Handlers. Yeah. And deeply cynical, like my country didn't take care of me kind of guys so i can set up x seals to do like wet work around the world yes uh gillian jacobs who i love as the put upon wife but who deeply supports her husband who's having a hard

time finding work her just like this winning time she deserves more i, I think, honestly. I really, I'm a big fan. I thought the movie, when Ben Foster exited the film, I felt like I exited the film. I think that's the case for most Ben Foster movies. If Ben Foster, when Ben Foster leaves Lone Survivor, I was like, I'm not interested in this Lone Survivor. Yeah. The tagline for this movie is, the mission is not

what it seems. Honestly, that's the tagline for this podcast. What was, what was this podcast. What was what was it ultimately? What was the mission? In the contractor? Like what it seems like is a fun conversation

between two guys who love movies about six spies. Yeah. It's like oh that's what it was about? Will Chris operate on Sean? And where did we land?

That I would probably get distracted by something else. Because I'm literally now my brain has been broken to the point where it's like I have like a reminder to do certain things and then I'll just get distracted by something else. Because I'm literally now, my brain has been broken to the point where it's like, I have like a reminder to do certain things. And then I'll just be like, oh, I just. So you're saying if I was bleeding out in a target,

you would check Twitter? No, I'm sure that you would be like demonstrative enough so that I would be like, this is the job at hand. But. I'm gonna die. I know it. That's what I would say. You're gonna be okay.

Any closing thoughts on the Greyman? Bobby, do any of these movies sound good? Well, I've seen many of these films, actually. Bobby, you sat through a couple of these

sub-genre experiments by me and Sean. Does this one hold water? Yeah, it does. Okay. Thank you. It does. It's a definite thing.

I think that the reason that they didn't happen in the 80s is because everybody was afraid of offending the US government which was doing more of the shit in the 80s than any other decade. But that's what I find so interesting about it is that was high time for these

kinds of operations. Oliver North was sitting right there. Yeah, but all the people that were disillusioned by him, they didn't come of age until the 2000s. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe it was a bunch of 13-year-olds who grew up watching Iran-Contra and started making movies. Being like Stephen A. Smith hot take.

Did Oliver North have a point? What do you think? It's been a while since I've looked at the tapes, you know, since I've reviewed. His testimony? Yeah. Is it good stuff? Is that good TV?

I'm going to withhold comment on that one. I haven't really reviewed the material recently either. So anything else you want to say about this? No, I think we did a good job here today. So, it's the gunman. The grayman. The grayman. It's the gunman. I think gunman. It's definitely the gunman. But also, do you think in 15

months, I'm going to text you and be like, grayman's actually pretty good? You know, I don't. You and I are guilty of that. And I'm really interested in the... I want to do a We Got It Wrong episode. I think that would be fun to just go back to the last five years

and be like, we came in really too nice or... We did that last year. We blew it. You blew it episode. Was that about once we blew it on the show? Yeah. I played old clips of you guys

saying stuff about movies that you changed your mind about. This is what happens when you get past year five. It's just like, did I ever talk? There will be whole swaths of the watch where I'm like, what the fuck? Did we talk about this for nine weeks? I'm going to say something.

This is really serious. The miracle of childbirth is something that I can't overstate. That's not it. I love it so much. It's innings pitched. You think too much time on the mic. I'm telling you, man. I need Tommy John surgery for my takes.

I can't remember. Your ulnar collateral ligament is hurting? How can I help you with that? I look back on top 10 lists of TV from like 2018 or 19, and I'm like, have I seen these shows? And I'm like very passionate about them, but I'm like, I don't remember a single thing that happens in this. What did I say about this show?

Well, thanks so much Chris Ryan for listening to the watch for deeply held no I'm just saying you're good

but I literally was like I have a great idea guys and Bobby looked me right in the eye and said you did that you straight up already did it yeah twice

two to three times a week on mic for multiple years it's more an indictment of my lack of creativity. This is why we got to expand our purview and start talking more

about like Iran-Contra and stuff. Like, you know, just like... Are you teasing just my opinion? I'm just saying that like I think that you and I

maybe are getting hemmed in my culture. If you want a soft pitch in minute 82... Would you guys support me and Sean just going through the day's news?

And just giving our takes. Mansion, what changed? I'm pot committed to producing you guys, but I don't know, man. Every pot is at least three hours long and it's just me being like, do you see this thing about Stranger Things? Did they re-edit that?

Do you ever see that? You just did that on a podcast. I know, but I'm just saying, I would just be doing- You were like, here'sen cinema's take on you know uh jurisprudence that's not that you're talking you're no no pop culture okay so just liz trust versus rishi rishi sunak like let's do you got like that's part of pm that's part of it part of it is they're no longer making the choco taco why not oh yeah and like also then getting really mad at people being upset about that. Yes, absolutely.

You fucking didn't eat it when you had it. Yes, it's me looking at Reddit and reading Reddit and reading it to you. But like homepage Reddit. I think what you want, what you're talking about is being a subcontractor, but a subpodcaster. That's right. You want to be a podcaster without a country. We want to be potters without a nation. Yeah.

I think... Abandoned by your government and your handler, your producer. The name of this show is Wetworks. Do you think Bill's going to listen to this part

and be like, great idea, you guys. You should just get started. Bill's never heard the show, so not really too worried about it. Hey, thank you, Chris Ryan. Thank you to our producer in person,

Bobby Wagner here in lovely Los Angeles. Congratulations on the Mets. I'll be perfectly honest. I have no idea what we're doing on the next episode of The Big Picture, so I'm not going to tease one to you, but we will see you then because you're listening. Mansion Talk.