The Russo Brothers, who made an indelible print on the MCU, gather a fun cast to deliver a fast-paced action film that features fantastic kinetic camera work, but is held back by some cardboard characters.

Six (Ryan Gosling) is a career criminal that gets recruited by a CIA handler, Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton). He’s incredibly skilled at what he does but his latest assignment involves killing a target that is revealed to be his predecessor, someone who has secrets about the agency and some of its work.

This makes Six the new target. Carmichael (Rege-Jean Page), the head of the new program puts out a bounty on six, which draws out a number of characters, all of whom seem to follow the lead of the trash-stashed Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans), a sociopath who loves his work.

With the aid of another agent Dani (Ana de Armas), the pair who are in possession of an encrypted chip detailing Carmichael’s villainous plans are on the run, but have to respond to the bait of a captured Fitzroy and his granddaughter, Claire (Julia Butters).

Lloyd may be out of his league as the pair go head to head! The action sequences, stunt work, and camera work is a lot of fun, bringing a nice vibe to the film, and the script plays to the actors’ strengths, Gosling is cool and glib, Evans gets to be funny, and chew some scenery as a baddie, and de Armas kicks ass and looks fantastic doing it. They all do. It’s a ridiculously good-looking cast.

It’s a great looking film, but there’s no real depth to any of the characters, they are all exactly what you expect them to be, puzzle pieces that help form the picture of the film. There’s nothing else to them, and while the actors are wonderful to watch, and Gosling seems to be having a good time, there’s not much going on beyond that.

I like the way the Russos tell their stories, they always seem to want to push the action envelope, from the way the fights are choreographed to the way the camera moves throughout the sequences and introduces us to locales.

It feels like a bit of an underrated film, it’s definitely entertaining, and after seeing Chris Evans play a hero for a number of years and films, it’s really enjoyable to see him leaning into playing a bad guy with no moral qualms at all.

Add in Alfre Woodard, Shea Whigham and Jessica Henwick, a score by Henry Jackman and you have a great concoction for a movie night. The Russos are a lot of fun as a creative team, and I can’t wait to see what else they have planned for movie-lovers.