WITH THEIR CAT-AND-MOUSE ACTION SPECTACULAR THE GRAY MAN, THE RUSSO BROTHERS — DIRECTORS OF AVENGERS: ENDGAME — ARE GOING FOR BROKE. AGAIN. WE TALK TO THEM, STARS RYAN GOSLING AND CHRIS EVANS AND MORE ABOUT A HUGE NEW SPY SAGA

WORDS CHRIS HEWITT

THE GRAY MAN

15 JULY CINEMAS 22 JULY NETFLIX

Sharpshooter — and suiter — Courtland Gentry (Ryan Gosling), aka Six.

EXIT STRATEGIES ARE wonderful things. Whether you’re an internationally successful film director or the world’s greatest assassin or, like most of the people reading this, somewhere inbetween, it’s prudent to plan ahead, no matter how bountiful the situation, for an expedient exit.

Take the Russo brothers. Their entire career, you could argue, has been one comprised of exit strategies at opportune times, whether it’s the way in which they both gave up nascent careers in law (Anthony) and acting (Joe) to focus on directing films; or the skilful manner in which they decamped from the failure of their Owen Wilson comedy, You, Me And Dupree, to become major players in sitcoms with work on the likes of Community; or the way they parlayed their cachet from that world into directing Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

They don’t tend to stay in one place for too long. In the end, they stayed at Marvel for five years, for four films that grossed around $6.7 billion. But from virtually the moment they arrived, they were sizing up the room, and earmarking the exit. That was when they first clapped eyes on The Gray Man.

The first in a series of novels by Mark Greaney, who also succeeded Tom Clancy as author of the Jack Ryan series, The Gray Man centres around Courtland Gentry, a convict who is recruited by the CIA and trained to become the ultimate expendable asset: a master assassin who can knock off anyone, anywhere, anytime. Codenamed Sierra Six, because Courtland Gentry is a) too memorable and b) too easily confused with a country club, he suddenly finds himself on the run after being burned by his own people, and forced to become a faceless figure blending into the shadows. A ‘grey man’, if you will.

You can see why it appealed to the guys who were making The Winter Soldier, a film which involves a master assassin who can knock off anyone, anywhere, anytime, and a government-trained killing machine who finds himself on the run after being burned by his own people. “We wanted to use The Winter Soldier as a springboard into something else action-oriented,” recalls Joe Russo. “I remember reading the book in two days and going, ‘That was fantastic, it’s a great character, let’s try to find a way into it.’”