When I was a kid, I read comic books and in those comics were ads for everything from "sea monkeys" to books about "freaks." One ad showed an elderly, bewhiskered man named Albert Fish; beneath his picture was the word "cannibal." In my neighborhood, there was an old man who looked a LOT like Albert Fish: his skin and his hair were gray, and he wore an ankle-length gray trenchcoat. He would stand across the street from the grade school I attended and accost kids on their way home every day. I asked who he was and someone told me that his name was "Pork Chop." I made a point of avoiding him. But there came a day when I had to stay after school for some long-forgotten reason. As I crossed the street, I realized that someone was following me. I turned, and there was Pork Chop. He reached for me. "Come here, son," he whispered. I backed away, shaking my head, and looked toward the school- but the school was empty and deserted now. Pork Chop came at me, arm outstretched. I ran. My mother called the police when I got home and I went back with them to the place where I'd been accosted, but Pork Chop was gone. A door-to-door search yielded no results. I've never forgotten that close encounter, nor Albert Fish, "cannibal." While I think that Bauchau is probably a lot more cultured than the real-life Fish was, his is still a riveting performance and helps make THE GRAY MAN a true crime movie worth watching. The only real problem with it is the inordinate amount of time that is spent on the obsessed cop: real or a fictional construct, he's not the reason to see THE GRAY MAN.