F. Gary Gray Ranked

Welcome to the latest edition of my "Ranked" series, where I rank a franchise or the filmography of an actor/director from worst to best and hand out releated acolades. This week, I'm profiling the work of veteran director F.Gary Gray. 

F. Gary Gray's Filmography Ranked:
9.Be Cool (F)
8.Men in Black: International (B-)
7.Set It Off (B-)
6.A Man Apart (B)
5.Law Abiding Citizen (B+)
4.The Italian Job (A)
3.The Fate of the Furious (A)
2.Straight Outta Compton (A)
1.Friday (A+)

Top Dog: Friday (1995)
Friday is what every hangout movie should aspire to be. It has an effortlessly loose, natural feel, the characters are the type of vibrant, fun people that you'd have a blast spending time with in real life and the laughs hardly ever stop. Really can't ask for anything more from a buddy comedy.  

Lowlight: Be Cool (2005)
The level of energy Gray brings behind the camera has helped establish a pretty high floor for his movies. Showbiz comedy Be Cool landed a few levels below that sturdy, reliable floor and caused the septic tank to explode all over the place. This film is one of the most lazy, distasteful and overwhelmingly pathetic attempts to make something that's considered humorous that I've ever watched. There are allergy medication commercials that are funnier than this and based on the largely phoned-in performances here (namely John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Vince Vaughn), most of the actors involved seemed to realize this project was worthless during the filming process.

Most Underrated: The Fate of the Furious (2017)
All of the recent Fast and Furious movies are pretty close on the quality scale. However, The Fate of the Furious is considered to be the weakest from a consensus standpoint and I'm here to say that I strongly disagree with the assessment. In fact, I believe that the particularly playful action sequences, emergence of the incredible Hobbs/Shaw pairing and Charlize Theron's unapologetic, grade-A overacting as the villain Cipher makes it the best entry in the franchise aside from Fast Five. PUT SOME RESPECT ON THE CARS THAT ARE RAINING DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS AND DWAYNE JOHNSON RE-DIRECTING A TORPEDO THAT'S SLIDING ACROSS ICE WITH HIS FIST DAMN IT.

Most Overrated: Set It Off (1996)
Forced melodrama really does a number on the quality of the heist drama Set It Off.  Every time this story about four LA women (Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, Kimberly Elise, Vivica A. Fox) working dead-end janitorial jobs who decide to start robbing banks to put an end to their long-running financial struggles starts to get really compelling, some kind of contrived plot development emerges and disrupts the flow of the film. Adding soap opera-esque narrative flourishes brings a layer of phoniness to a story that's otherwise aiming (and mostly succeeds) at providing a grimly realistic take on a popular subgenre, and subsequently makes this a frustrating missed opportunity that no amount of quality performances or well-crafted robbery sequences can save.

Biggest Missed Opportunity: Men in Black: International (2019)
A great buddy team at the center of the intergalactic action is a big reason why two of the first three Men in Black films worked so well and the reboot Men in Black: International gets that key ingredient right with the effortlessly charismatic duo of Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson. So how did Men in Black: International nail the pivotal lead pairing yet fail to replicate the success of Men in Black and Men in Black III? Well, that's on Gray, the writing duo of Art Marcum and Matt Holloway and reported behind-the-scenes tampering from producer Walter F. Parkes that included on-the-fly rewrites and final cut privileges. Gray's direction is uncharacteristically flat and the monotonous script establishes an oddly serious tone that actively suffocates the magic of the strong comic rapport between Hemsworth and Thompson that made the scenes they shared in Thor: Ragnarok so memorable. While it's not likely to ever happen following International's middling global box office performance, I'd be all for Hemsworth and Thompson getting another crack at starring in a Men in Black film that actually knew how to properly utilize their talents/chemistry.  

Finest Remake of a Film from the '60s That Absolutely Blew My Mind at Age 11: The Italian Job (2003)
Before I proceed, I'm just going to say that I watched The Italian Job a few years back and it held up beautifully. It's an absurdly entertaining movie with an amazing ensemble cast (Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Edward Norton, Mos Def, Seth Green, Jason Statham, Donald Sutherland) and a closing heist/chase sequence that remains an all-timer. That being said, this shit just hit a little bit different when I was on the cusp of being a teenager. The Italian Job was one of the first times I had ever seen a real, adult-aimed action spectacle and it just hooked me right away. Everything from the various steps the characters took to plan the robbery to the unforeseen to the snarky way the characters interacted with one another to the unfolding of the actual action scenes was so exciting that I truly didn't want it to end. Guess that was just an early indication that this genre was something I was going to end up being alarmingly passionate about as a grown person.