In the Grey (MA) - 97 minutes

A slick Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) actioner, the story involves the shadowy world of high finance.

The formula goes like this: the risks may be great, but the rewards are even greater.

The yarn unfolds through the eyes of an attractive, highly confident, young lawyer. 

Rachel Wild (Eliza Gonzalez) works between the moral and the immoral, the black and the white – in other words, in the grey.

She is an expensive hired gun with access to a crack team that has its finger on the pulse.

So it is that she offers her services to entitled investment banker Bobby Sheen (Rosamund Pike).

Sheen works for the firm Spencer Goldstein and she has a major problem on her hands.

Her company loaned crooked tycoon Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem) a billion dollars, but he is not inclined to pay it back.

He’s already taken out one debt collector with whom he struck a deal that he subsequently welched on.

Sheen and Wild are hardly fond of each other, but business is business and with the fee set, Wild goes to work.

Her go-to men are two cool operators, ex-Special Forces agents Bronco (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Sid (Henry Cavill), with whom she has history.

She attacks Salazar both legally (in court) and illegally (Bronco and Sid will disable his operation on the ground).

First, she makes her presence felt with Salazar’s lawyer, William Horowitz (Fisher Stevens), unravelling Salazar’s secretive operations, incurring the money man’s ire.

For him, the stakes have never been higher and Wild is getting under his skin. 

Mind you, before this is over Salazar won’t be her only problem.

Self-belief and polish are the stock in trade as Wild and her cohort chip away at Salazar’s hidden assets.

They are well practised and know what they are doing every step of the way.

Ritchie is at pains to point out the road map to retrieving the billion dollars. 

As Wild works her way towards securing a face-to-face meeting with Salazar on his “private” island, her crew reveals details of three exit plans.

Like so many films of this genre, you have to suspend belief to appreciate what is on offer.

Salazar and his cronies barely lay a finger on Wild, Bronco and Sid, or their trusted associates, yet dozens of Salazar’s henchmen are readily taken out.

Immaculately turned out, Gonzalez looks and acts like “a million bucks”. In fact, all the performances, including byplay between Bronco and Sid, are sound. 

In The Grey is formulaic, but effective.

It is not Ritchie’s best work, but it moves along at pace and delivers some smart one liners, subterfuge, gunfire and explosions.

Rated MA, it scores a 7 out of 10.