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The Grey is an unexpectedly great movie featuring an old school man–versus–nature story. It shows the tiny speck of humanity that we represent against the grand vista of nature, how fragile we are, and features lots of fang–barred, bloodthirsty wolf predators eating the bejesus out of hapless protagonists. While some artistic liberty was probably taken to ensure the full dramatic potential the point is nature will kill the hell out of you if you let it! Much better to stay indoors and watch movies. Like The Grey. Don’t watch it on a plane, though. Or if you’re planning any sort of extended voyage into a snow–blasted wasteland. Or if you’re planning on being close to wolves.
Depressed and isolated wolf hunter, Ottway (Liam Neeson), lives a depressing and isolated life in an Alaskan mining community. When Ottway and several of his companions are in a brutal plane crash, they end up in the middle of a snowy nowhere with few supplies and less chance of survival. Things go from bad to downright awful with a pack of wolves stalking them. So they trek outward into the wilderness to find safety and get further away from the killer wolves.
Neeson doesn’t exactly reinvent his on–screen persona, he’s playing his typical hard ass with a deeper sadness running beneath, but he’s still a good lead. There’s one moment where he screams to the heavens asking for divine intervention to get him out of his predicament which skirts being over–the–top. However that bit illustrates the philosophical underpinning of the story; with all these terrible things happening to them for no real reason, is there a larger force looking out for them? To commemorate the fallen, Ottway decides to collect the wallets of the dead and it goes from a silly idea to something more important, as carrying and collecting the wallets become a larger metaphor for their attempt at surviving. What happens with those wallets in the final minutes provides an unexpectedly dramatic climax.
The other actors manage to be more interesting than usual horror movie fodder. Frank Grillo plays Diaz, a cynical survivor who struggles against Ottway’s leadership, and while he’s made to be despicable at the outset you eventually feel sorry for him by the end. As a semi–comic relief character, Joe Anderson is a talkative guy who helps relieve some of the movie’s tension early on. Dermot Mulroney and Dallas Roberts are two the smarter ones who get to stick around for awhile, giving slight characters more dimension.
While it is important to be kind to animals and respect the environment, this movie doesn’t try to play nice and makes the wild a truly deadly place. The movie goes out of its way to show that these are some nasty buggers, with at one point the wolves picking someone off seemingly out of spite. Nature is not kind to man in this movie; it’s a cold unforgiving place that comes up with various ways to kill you.
Writer/Director Joe Carnahan (of the forgettable A–Team and the underrated Smokin’ Aces) takes what could be a dull movie in a lesser directors hands and manages to put in some distinctive visual spin. He’s very good at structuring reveals inside of a shot. An apparent survivor of the crash twitching is actually quite dead but only moving because they’re being eaten by a wolf (great freak–out there). Even a seconds–long shot of a wolf’s snowy paw–print saturated with blood has palatable menace. There are a few solid jumps at parts when people get snatched, or a dangerous chasm crossing, or a race down river that turns quite harrowing. Carnahan stages some impressive scenes like the eye–popping plane crash and its aftermath. Another good scene takes place when someone is being picked off by wolves. His companions try to assist him, but the snow is too deep to get to him in time. The Grey even throws in little hallucinations that the characters have at desperate moments; when one character sees his daughter it’s actually sweet and the grim cut back to reality is chilling.
The very end of the movie may be problematic for some. I found it to be stirring, dramatic, sad, a neat twist, and pretty awesome. By cutting back to a brief moment between Ottway and his wife, it provides a nicely understated emotional beat for the movie’s closing minutes. There’s also a poem that pops up repeatedly through the flick that is abstractly written which may seem a bit ponderous but when used at the end it nails the moment perfectly. Since the ending is somewhat abstract a theatre–goer a few seats ahead of me voiced his displeasure with a simple, “Bullshit,” when the credits rolled. Not me, though. I thought it was great.
It’d be difficult to say that The Grey is a fun time at the movies, in fact the tone of the film overall is fairly dour, but it certainly is intense and skillfully directed. There are some lulls during but that just sets you up for the gut–punch of when things go wrong. Assuming you can handle it, The Grey is worth experiencing. V
THE GREY
4/5 Stars
Directed by Joe Carnahan.
Starring: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, Frank Grillo, Nonso Anozie, Joe Anderson.
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