The most broadly influential movie Guy Ritchie has ever made is probably one of his earlier ones, like Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch, even if those were themselves heavily influenced by Quentin Tarantino. But within the body of Ritchie’s work, the movie with the most influence on his own work might be The Man From U.N.C.L.E., his 2015 failure to launch a franchise. Much of what he’s done since seems haunted by the self-evidently good time he had making that movie, as well as his regret that no sequel ever materialized. He’s spent much of the decade since making a series of one-off spy, caper, and/or action movies that could pass for sequels to U.N.C.L.E. or each other, not least because their overlapping cast members include U.N.C.L.E.‘s Cavill. It wouldn’t be fair to call this mode autopilot, because generally the results have been fun. But In The Grey, his latest effort, does suggest a certain pro forma approach to the Ritchie playbook.
Is Ritchie, who wrote and directed In The Grey, trying to tell us something with his more mercenary heroes this time out? Rachel (Eiza González) narrates to the audience early on that she’s a high-powered lawyer specializing in retrieving massive loans that various shady characters will sometimes refuse to pay back to various shady (and rich, and powerful) organizations. To this not exactly righteous mission, she adds some less aboveboard tactics courtesy of her right-and-left-hand men, Bronco (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Sid (once again, Henry Cavill)—hence their operation “in the grey,” morally speaking. This particular adventure follows the trio and their team (the wheel man, the tech guy, etc.) as they attempt to pressure the glowering Salazar (Carlos Bardem) to return a full billion dollars to an investment firm fronted by Bobby (Rosamund Pike). As we see early on, there’s a decent chance Salazar will pretend to strike an agreement only to call it off via hired murder. Our heroes are putting themselves in danger on behalf of a rich outfit to enhance their presumably already-considerable wealth. Basically, it’s a fortune operation, replete with some ungentlemanly warfare.
It’s also (unlike those past Ritchie capers) a peculiar idea for a movie, slickly gussied up to resemble an irresistible one. As with most of the director’s recent films, the team’s techniques borrow from the slick likes of Mission: Impossible, James Bond, and the Ocean’s movies, only here quietly shed of any world-saving righteousness or for-the-sake-of-it roguish thievery. Maybe that’s why Cavill and Gyllenhaal affect that Ocean’s deadpan that can come across as bored hostility in the wrong hands.
Mostly, though, these are the right ones. Like Cavill, Gyllenhaal has worked with Ritchie before, but on the more serious-minded military actioner The Covenant, drawing on his trademark intensity. Here, he slips into the rhythms of a smartass Ritchie lad, alongside the well-practiced Cavill. González is also a Ritchie vet—this is their third movie together—and she hard-charges right through some of Ritchie’s more questionable dialogue, which here alternates between crisp odd-angle quips and first-draft awkwardness, specializing in redundancies (something is described as “rare and unique”—wow, both?!—while one character is called both “clever” and “cunning” in the same sentence, though apparently saying “we’ll catch you up” in place of “we’ll catch up with you” is a British-ism that just sounds weird coming from Gyllenhaal).
Much of the movie’s first half consists of Rachel, Bronco, and Sid arranging various contingencies for a quick escape from the island where Rachel is meeting Salazar. It’s an acknowledgment that the process of assembling these pieces is one of a caper movie’s chief pleasures, regardless of the reasons or the eventual outcome. In The Grey then riffs on its own cataloging by providing a similar diagramming of Rachel’s recipe for a Negroni. Ritchie’s style is more relaxed and less ostentatious in caper mode, more reliant on costuming (especially on the stunning González) and location shooting (mostly in Spain and the Canary Islands) than rapidfire editing or crazy camera angles, though his action sequences still cut together energetically. Eventually, the characters are thrown through their self-created obstacle course in battlefield-like conditions; for whatever reason, Ritchie simply cannot resist a car chase down a scenic dirt road.
Some viewers may be able to resist just fine. In The Grey never transcends its roots as One Of Those; it’s Ritchie in fun-workhorse mode, more businesslike than Operation Fortune but fleeter than Fountain Of Youth. The shrug-inducing underlying caper—it’s easy to root for the likable, beautiful stars to survive, but really, who cares beyond that?—leeches away some of Ritchie’s usual zing. But anyone who enjoys his now-annual adventures can safely surrender to this one, whether in a movie theater now or on a lazy couch-bound Sunday sometime in the future.
Director: Guy Ritchie
Writer: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal, Eiza González, Carlos Bardem, Kristofer Hivju, Fisher Stevens, Rosamund Pike
Release Date: May 15, 2026
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