The following contains spoilers for The Gray Man, now streaming on Netflix.
There’s a flashback about halfway through the Russo brothers' latest film, The Gray Man, where Ryan Gosling’s character, CIA operative Sierra Six, is assigned to protect his boss’s niece Claire. During one of the scenes where they are getting to know each other, Claire asks Six about one of his tattoos and, without saying the name, Six tells her that it is a character from Greek myth. After he briefly describes the ancient story, it becomes clear that his tattoo is a reference to Sisyphus, the Greek king, who was punished by Zeus to eternally roll a large boulder up a hill, only for the stone to roll back down to the bottom before Sisyphus could reach the top. This unnamed myth becomes the key to understanding Six’s character, foreshadowing everything to come and redefining everything that came before.
The Gray Man tells the story of Court Gentry, a young man sent to prison after murdering his violent and abusive father who agrees to work for the CIA under the codename Sierra Six in exchange for having his sentence commuted. He uses his skills successfully for 18 years, but after finding a thumb drive with evidence that implicates his new boss Denny Carmichael in a series of international crimes, he goes on the run and tries to survive long enough to take Carmichael down. As dozens of elite mercenaries and assassins attempt to take him out, Six shows his skills over and over again, easily surviving waves of violent confrontations where he is outnumbered and out-gunned. However, there are four moments in the film where Six loses his fight, confirming the Sisyphean nature of his journey.
The first time Six loses a fight is perhaps the most surprising, as it follows an elaborate escape scene that shows his ability to fight through anything. But immediately after surviving a bloody betrayal and plane crash, Six is captured by an unassuming tech operative, who is forging Six’s new passport, opening a trap door right below him. Six’s second loss comes almost immediately after his first when he escapes the pit and another batch of mercenaries only to get shot with a tranquilizer gun by CIA agent Dani Miranda, played by Ana de Armas. She takes him prisoner in the back of her hatchback as she works out who to trust and ultimately joins forces with Six to help him take down Carmichael.
Whereas his other three losses come at the hands of traps and guns, Six’s third loss is the only one where he meets an opponent who is more skilled than he is. His fight against the elite mercenary Lone Wolf, played by Dhanush, ends with Six bloody, broken and most importantly, without the thumb drive he needs to complete his mission. The final time Six is defeated comes at the point in The Gray Man where most would expect a happy ending: he and Miranda have retrieved the thumb drive, rescued Claire and defeated big bad Lloyd Hansen, played by Chris Evans. But as soon as Six is about to walk off into the sunset, Carmichael’s second in command, Suzanne Brewer, played by Jessica Henwick, arrives only to shoot Six, take him back into custody and destroy the evidence.
By the end of The Gray Man, it appears that Six has undergone a series of Sisyphean tasks, continually trying to push his metaphorical boulder up the hill only to have it roll back down again where he must start over. When Six falls through the trap door, he literally hits rock bottom, and his failed confrontations with Miranda, Lone Wolf and Brewer all add a roadblock to Six’s journey, forcing him to reset. But The Gray Man adds a bit of nuance that was missing from the original Greek myth because within each of his failures is also a permanent success.
Six’s capture in the pit was the only reason that Miranda was able to find him, and his time spent in her trunk is what allows them to team up. Lone Wolf appears to get the upper hand at first, but he sees honor in Six’s mission after witnessing Hansen’s evil plot and decides to help him in the end. And even though he doesn’t succeed in taking down Carmichael, he saves Claire’s life and escapes to fight another day in the upcoming sequel. Like Sisyphus, Six is trapped in a life of hardship, prisoner to his past actions that got him in jail in the first place. Yet, in the same way that the murder of his father was both a violent crime and an act of peace, Six contains an inner duality of violence and compassion, failure and success that is in constant turmoil. But unlike the Greek myth, Six’s successes aren’t reset with each failure, offering hope that he might one day make it to the top of the mountain.
To see all of Six's successes and failures, The Gray Man is now playing in theaters and streaming on Netflix.