Netflix Aces Amazon in Two Competing Entertainments

by MIKE ORLOCK

[email protected]

During this summer of spiraling inflation, what does $300 million buy if you’re Amazon and Netflix?

Is it unkind to say, not as much as you’d hope?

Those two apex streaming services spent that astronomical amount combined to bring two competing “entertainments” to our smart TVs: The Terminal List (R), an eight-episode revenge thriller adapted from Jack Carr’s 2018 novel, currently on Prime; and The Gray Man (PG-13), a two-hour conspiracy thriller lifted from Mark Greaney’s 2009 novel, in theaters and on Netflix.

Based strictly on the bucks, Amazon got more bang for its millions than Netflix did for its $200 million wager, the most expensive in its short history, topping the $160 million the service dished out for last year’s Red Notice. But based on what’s on screen (a quantity-versus-quality kind of comparison), two hours spent with Netflix makes a lot more sense than the eight-plus hours you’ll spend getting terminally listed on Amazon.

The Terminal List stars Chris Pratt, who’s no stranger to big-budgeted blockbuster productions (the Jurassic World trilogy, the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise). He’s usually cast as the glib, likable hero who can talk to dinosaurs with his hands and charm his way out of any number of intergalactic space jams. 

Here, however, he’s miscast as Navy Seal James Reece, whose team is wiped out in a before-the-credits massacre during a top-secret mission in Syria. Reece’s commanding officers are quick to blame him, even though he protests, loudly, that there’s a rat in the intel.

In quick succession, Reece is discharged, shipped home and framed for the murders of his wife and daughter (Riley Keough and Arlo Mertz, respectively), whose family relationships are fleshed out through numerous flashbacks that interrupt the action every 20 minutes or so. 

Pursued by cops, corporate hit men and an intrepid journalist (Constance Wu) who smells her Watergate moment, Reece goes on the lam assisted by his best bud, Ben (Taylor Kitsch), a burned-out CIA operative. They make a list of people – leading all the way up the chain of command to the secretary of defense (Jeanne Tripplehorn) – whom they intend to target to get to the truth of what happened in Syria and to Reece’s family.

Pratt tries his best to play the grim, merciless killing machine whose skills are turned against the people who trained and betrayed him, but his heart doesn’t seem in it. He’s asked to do a few gratuitously horrible things, but I never believed that Chris Pratt, the Star Lord, would be doing what this script asks. 

To be fair, the middle three episodes (4, 5, 6) are pretty exciting. Filmmaker Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, The Equalizer) had a hand in the production, so the show offers a great surface. There’s just nothing underneath. By the time the “big reveal” comes, I was regretting the eight hours of my life I’d just wasted.

The Gray Man stars a buffed Ryan Gosling as Sierra Six, a covert killer working for one of those alphabet-soup agencies that operates in the shadows of the U.S. government. When the precocious young daughter of his boss, Mr. Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton doing a great Billy Bob Thornton), questions his unusual name, he replies that 007 was already taken, so you know the movie is winking in bondage to another franchise.

We meet Six on a job in Bangkok. He’s assisted by another agent with an actual name – Dani – played by Ana de Armas, who last year showed similar moves in a real Bond movie (No Time to Die). Their mission to recover an “asset” and eliminate the seller gets predictably messy. 

Before he dies, the target puts Six in possession of a disk drive that could compromise the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus. Of course, agency director Denny Carmichael (a super-smooth Regé-Jean Page of Bridgerton fame) does what any head of a super-secret agency would do: He sends out an army of assassins to kill Six before he can figure out what’s on the disk, regardless of the cost or collateral damage. And in this movie, $200 million can buy an awful lot of damage.

There’s fun to be had in the cat-and-mouse game between Six and Lloyd Hansen, the polyester-clad psychopath who’s hired to subtract Six with extreme prejudice. Lloyd is played by Captain America himself, Chris Evans, whose joy playing a despicable villain after a career of Marvel Avenger virtue is nearly palpable. He’s so good at being really bad that it’s hard to resist the movie’s craziest charms.

Anthony and Joe Russo, golden boys of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, conceived and directed The Gray Man. Their Avengers: End Game and Infinity War have raked in nearly $5 billion between them, so Netflix is obviously hoping the brothers’ Midas touch will turn around sagging subscription numbers and put corporate finances back in the black. The Gray Man isn’t in the Marvel league, but Netflix seems all in. A sequel is already in the works. 

In another lifetime, Mike Orlock wrote film reviews for The Reporter/Progress newspapers in the western suburbs of Chicago. He has also taught high school English, coached basketball and authored three books of poetry. He currently serves as Door County’s poet laureate.