In The Grey, the new Henry Cavill-led action movie directed by Guy Ritchie, has debuted to a 54% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

For a while, In the Grey attempts something you wouldn't expect to find in a typical shoot-'em-up action film: It turns into a process movie. Instead of offering up the kind of chaotic, off-the-cuff violence that something like the John Wick films work hard to sell, In the Grey meticulously details infiltration and extraction plans conceived by a pair of elite operatives, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill. Not only that, considerable time is spent on their boss, a cunning recovery specialist (Eiza González) who targets shady criminals on behalf of shadier clients, doing things like forensic accounting and filing court orders to apply pressure to those in her crosshairs. It might sound boring; it's actually the best and most original part of the movie.

It seems almost unbelievable that Guy Ritchie had directed only four movies when he made his long-awaited return to the gangster genre with RocknRolla in 2008. Ritchie broke out with the cult classic crime comedy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998, which he followed up with the equally admired Snatch. His career progressed in a rather conventional manner; after RocknRolla, Ritchie was given the opportunity to direct his first Hollywood tentpole, Sherlock Holmes. He returned to direct its sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. But that's when things took an unexpected turn. Ritchie began to focus almost exclusively on movies that could launch franchises, but was unsuccessful each time. He's now in a particularly prolific phase, with a new movie around the corner and two more lined up.