The Gray Man

Adapted from Mark Greaney’s 2009 novel, the first Court Gentry book. It was announced with James Gray directing and Brad Pitt attached, became a gender swapped version for Charlize Theron at Sony, and moved only once Joe Russo and Anthony Russo took it on. There are nine action sequences, and the Prague one, running from a square shootout into a tram chase, is the biggest; that stretch alone took 6 weeks. The Russos went back into the square three or four times for reshoots, gathered hundreds of hours of documentary style coverage of the stunt performers, then spent months in the edit looking for an order. Hence a film that reads as a row of set pieces, not a line. The tram is real. Prague’s transit operator says it was built for the film from spare parts of damaged trams. The overhead wires were left dead so stunt performers could work on the roof, which also let it leave the rails. The budget was 200 million dollars, the theatrical run took roughly 454 thousand, and the film drew 88.55 million hours of viewing in three days. A good fit if you want the Prague sequence built from real vehicles and real stunt performers. Not for viewers expecting the connecting scenes to hold nine set pieces together.