In the Grey Review: A Reflection on the Strange Career of Guy Ritchie

In the Grey, written and directed by Guy Ritchie, is a nifty bit of entertainment. Ninety minutes long before credits and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill, and Eiza González, the action thriller concerns a small group of “extraction specialists” who specialize in getting very powerful people to pay their debts. They often work in the service of _other _very powerful people. In this case, they are tasked to recover a one billion dollar debt from bad guy Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem) by a nefarious, New York City law firm of which the shady Bobby (Rosamund Pike) is an employee.

As with many a Guy Ritchie film, exposition is central to everything. González’s Rachel Wild tells us the entire plan via playful narration, from start to finish, as her team moves through their preparations on Salazar’s James Bond villain-type island. Gyllenhaal is the muscle, Cavill is the brains, kind of. There are big guns, fast cars, handsome hotels, and quippy exchanges of dialogue. _In the Grey _moves fast, is fun, and subverts just enough of the action genre tropes in which it is wallowing. The pace of the edit is quick and the dialogue is cheeky and repetitive. It’s all very much in line with the brand that Guy Ritchie has built over his over three decades of moviemaking.

Born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, the English Ritchie was expelled from school when he was 15 years old. In the ’90s, he made a start directing music videos, like so many filmmakers during that time. His short film _The Hard Case _earned some notice, then Ritchie met producer Matthew Vaughn, and everything changed. According to Ritchie, the two met “…in 1995 through a friend of mine who owned a Champagne oyster bar in Soho. Matthew told him he was a producer, so my friend told him a few lies about me and my script. Matthew called me up and said he was interested, and two days after I sent him the script he rang to say, ‘We’ll make this film.’ For the next two years we both dropped everything to concentrate on making it.”

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was a smash in the United Kingdom in 1998, eventually releasing in the States in 1999 and earning nearly four million dollars domestically. It is one of the more respected of the so-called “Quentin Tarantino Knock-Offs” that populated the late ’90s and early 2000s. _Snatch _came next, featuring a career comeback performance of sorts for Brad Pitt, earning over $83 million worldwide and cementing Ritchie’s style into the cultural lexicon. The next movie––an ill-advised remake of Lina Wertmüller’s _Swept Away _starring Ritchie’s then-wife Madonna––would lead to a falling out between Ritchie and Vaughn. From _The Independent _in 2004: “The notorious Swept Away almost brought [Ritchie and Vaughn] to blows. Ritchie wanted Madonna in the role of the heiress trapped on an island with her chauffeur while Vaughn preferred Penélope Cruz. Ritchie believed that Vaughn was implying that Madge wasn’t up to the job. In fact, he was taking the line of a producer which was simply that Cruz would sell the movie more easily to investors.” His next film, Revolver, is arguably his most ambitious work. It was long-delayed and little-seen. RocknRolla came a couple of years later, a more direct gangster picture in the vein of his earlier work, starring Gerard Butler and Idris Elba. It was not a success, though fairly well-reviewed. This fallow period ended quite quickly with the blockbuster _Sherlock Holmes _in 2009.

This is where Ritchie’s career gets strange. After a decade of waning “coolness,” the Englishman became a proper studio hitmaker. By injecting his rambunctious style into a big-budget property––not to mention working with an unpredictable star like Robert Downey Jr.––there is a whiff of originality to which audiences responded. An immediate sequel (Game of Shadows, underrated!) was also a hit, followed by two handsomely-made, big-budget flops: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. may be his best film, _King Arthur: Legend of the Sword _may be his weirdest. In 2019, his live-action _Aladdin _adaptation grossed over a billion dollars. Reminder, this is the same man who made Swept Away and an existential Jason Statham gangster picture with myriad references to Kabbalah (Revolver).

In early 2020, The Gentlemen was released, and this is where one could argue “Guy Ritchie as a sub-genre” really catches hold. The Gentlemen is the result of a decade of clever, irreverent gangster pictures followed by a decade of blockbusters with a manic bent. There is endless narration, a few too many offensive jokes, a considerable amount of violence within elaborate set pieces, and a supporting cast of stars you only get with a proven track record of interesting work. It’s quick, it’s nasty, it’s clever. Since then, the man has become an industry unto himself. He has directed _seven _films in seven years, COVID be damned. He’s got another one––Wife & Dog ––releasing this fall and _another _one (Viva La Madness) in post-production, set for 2027. There’s also _The Gentlemen _television show on Netflix, _MobLand _on Paramount+, and the just-released _Young Sherlock _series on Amazon Prime Video. Ritchie has directing credits on all of those shows.

And while the movies don’t always succeed at the box office (as of this writing, _In the Grey _has disappointed domestically), it appears they are all well-watched downstream, whether it be streaming, VOD, or both. His 2025 Apple TV+ blockbuster Fountain of Youth, for example, has been deemed a massive success by the company, boasting that it sat in their U.S. Top 10 for 300 days in the first year of its release. Currently, his WWII revisionist epic The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare sits at number 1 on Peacock’s streaming Top 10. Why, exactly, do these films work?

Well, as mentioned, exposition is central to everything. People talk a lot in Guy Ritchie films. They explain their motivations, and often react with audible articulation. And while it matches the often harried aesthetic, Ritchie’s particular sense of style is also _perfect _for this age of second-screen streaming. If this reads as a back-handed compliment, perhaps it is. One could fold their laundry and _hear _the energy of a Guy Ritchie picture with some success. This is, of course, a horrible way to take in a film and is not recommended in any way. And yet, it is part of the calculus of our current age of viewership. These are well-made, well-acted genre pictures that subvert expectations just enough so as to feel fresh. _In the Grey _is one of his better recent examples, and it fits nicely into the growing arsenal of Guy Ritchie cinema.

In the Grey is now in theaters.