In the new action picture “In the Grey,” directed by Guy Ritchie, the titular color finds little purchase. Given that the movie is set largely in the Canary Islands (with check-ins from big money spots such as Jeddah in Saudi Arabia), the colors here are mostly the vivid blue of the sea and the sharp, eye-popping cream of the outfits worn by both its villainous billion-dollar debtor Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem, Javier’s elder brother) and its righteous debt collector Rachel Wild (Eiza González).
Instead, “grey” here refers to a zone between not so much right and wrong — almost no one in this picture acts with any sense of morality as such — but legal and illegal. Wild is a lawyer, dispatched by Rosamund Pike’s duplicitous finance cougar Bobby to get Salazar to cough up what he owes. Her less-than-legal backup guys are Henry Cavill’s Sid, a broad-chested fellow whose khaki shirt nicely pairs with his cream trousers, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s Bronco, whose vibe suggests he’ll only remove his Prada sunglasses on pain of death.
These days, Ritchie’s films are all about fabulous looking people causing a ruckus and blowing a lot of stuff up and taking out less good-looking bad guys in the bargain. “In the Grey” not only delivers these goods but goes into copious detail about just how Sid and Bronco get their ruckus up to speed. Several times during the picture I was reminded of the network TV action smash “The A-Team,” and its star George Peppard’s catchphrase, “I love it when a plan comes together.” Cavill and Gyllenhaal never utter words to that effect — as it happens, a substantial amount of their dialogue is just quasi-homoerotic teasing — but when they pull off one extraction coup after another, you can see the satisfaction in their eyes.
In the Grey Rated R for language and ruckus. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters.
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