IN THE GREY. Guy Ritchie has, for almost 30 years now, traded on his charming, distinctly British brand of cleverness as heavily as anybody in the movie business. In the early days — Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch (2000) — when so many of us were caught up so willingly in the 1990s surge of genre cinema, his brand of brawny wit, with its winking violence and innumerable turnabouts, felt new and exciting and better executed than the work of many of his peers. As time wore on, though, and as we aged and weathered and perhaps became inured to some of the tricks and tropes of the 1990s world-cinema boom, the seams started to show. The fallow period that followed — Swept Away (2002), Revolver (2005), RocknRolla (2008) — revealed a filmmaker perhaps out of his depth, idea-wise, an anointed would-be auteur the breadth of whose spectacle-making seemed to have betrayed its lack of depth.
Still, we turned up and, Ritchie being a consummate and self-described bullshit artist, he has been able to parlay his early success into a thriving marquee career. There have been hits and misses, but he seems to have realized the limitations of his own imagination and, in so doing, found a lucrative, now time-tested vein of public interest to mine. As such, he remains one of the few writer-directors of his graduating class with the access and ability to bring big-budget, theatrically released, A-list (if that’s even still a thing) cast movies to market.
Despite my transparent cynicism and frequent disappointment, I retain some of my early enthusiasm for Ritchie’s work. And I have been as frequently excited by its costuming, production design and bravado as I have been (unsurprisingly) underwhelmed by its absence of nuance. He is, after all, a commercial craftsman of an ever-dwindling type. The financial success of his projects being assured enough, they can attract known names to the cast and promise well-crafted set-pieces replete with enough shoot-outs and chases and explosions to ensure a serotonin hit for those of us weaned on the action-porn of a bygone era. Sometimes that’s nearly enough.
Which is fortunate because in a case like In the Grey, that’s about all we’re gonna get. In the plus column, we’re gifted with Eiza González, Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal, looking great in business-casual and tactical-chic, ostensibly playing Robin Hood to recover a reneged-upon billion-dollar loan from a ruthless international player. There are drones, dirt bikes, speed boats and enough rounds expended to soothe our Golan-Globus, Cannon-conditioned lizard brains. And to some extent, that is enough. It’s fun, unassailably technically well-made action moviemaking, but Ritchie’s fealty to his own miscalculated precociousness colors the works with an air of superciliousness, an athletic attempt at intellectualism that, for its absent humility, plays as unintentionally hollow. Self-satisfied without any real justification, it cannot bridge the divide between its exciting attributes and its higher-minded intentions. R. 98M. BROADWAY.
THE CHRISTOPHERS. As counterpoint, I submit Steven Soderbergh, who, half a generation earlier, helped establish the framework for the Ritchies so soon to follow. He who, by contrast, has only occasionally (the Ocean’s movies) traded on his cleverness and done so to crowd-pleasing, almost self-deprecating effect. Soderbergh has, in one of the most exciting, exploratory careers in modern American cinema, dedicated his snarky intellect and technical acumen to tradecraft, unflaggingly turning out quietly astounding work that, in its focus on the finer points of story and the freedom inherent on (sometimes self-imposed) limitations, continues to advance the medium.
Because he is an efficiency expert (and his own cinematographer, camera operator and editor), Soderbergh gets to keep working, albeit on a less-grand, less-grandiose stage than someone like Ritchie, and he continues to challenge himself and the audience with compact, impeccably planned exercises in genre and tonality.
With The Christophers, written by Ed Solomon, Soderbergh delivers what could, in less capable hands, feel like a stagebound almost two-hander. It’s a deceptively simple exploration of the art world, commerciality, cynicism and the fragility of inspiration.
Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), approached by the bumbling, avaricious offspring of Julian Sklar (Ian McKellen) a prominent artist who has descended into something like self-parody, is tasked with surreptitiously completing a series of the aged master’s unfinished canvases, so that his undeserving, unloved children can capitalize on their father’s bygone illustriousness. Lori has her own motives for taking the job, we’ll learn, but they are not as transparent as those of her would-be accomplices.
What follows is an unshowy, delicately constructed primer in the art and craft of cinema, a funny-sad foray into fame and the exploration/dissolution of self that is the central dichotomy of artistic “success.” R. 100M. PRIME.
John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.
NOW PLAYING
CORPORATE RETREAT. It’s all ice breakers, team building and trust falls until the boss stops dropping bodies. R. 89M. BROADWAY.
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2. Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway and Stanley Tucci reprise their roles in the sequel to the comedy about fashion mavens and machinations. PG13. 119M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
HOKUM. Adam Scott stars as a horror writer visiting a haunted Irish inn. R. 107M. BROADWAY.
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THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU. Big-screen adventure with masked bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his adopted green son Grogu. PG-13. 132M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
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MORTAL KOMBAT II. Cosmic cage match starring Karl Urban, Joe Taslim and Hiroyuki Sanada. R. 116M. BROADWAY.
PASSENGER. A couple on a road trip have a gruesome accident and pick up a hitchhiking demon. R. 94M. BROADWAY.
PROJECT HAIL MARY. Ryan Gosling stars as a science teacher turned reluctant astronaut on a mission to save the planet. PG13. 156M. BROADWAY.
THE SHEEP DETECTIVE. The flock digs into their shepherd’s (Hugh Jackman) demise. PG. 110M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
SUPER MARIO BROS. GALAXY MOVIE. Animated video game adventure sequel with Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy and Jack Black. PG. 98M. BROADWAY.
For showtimes, visit catheaters.com and minortheatre.com.
This article appears in ‘Devastation’.