“The Grey” is an old fashioned survival tale harboring pretensions that it is something more. Not a lot more, just a hint of the psycho-cerebral, here, a smidge of the primal and primitive there.
Liam Neeson stars in director Joe Carnahan’s latest splash of testosterone (“Smoking Aces” was his) about a wintry plane crash in the Alaskan arctic in which the survivors are stalked by wolve. Their only protection –each other and the hunter (Neeson) whose job it was to understand wolves and shoot them when they got too close to oil workers.
The crash itself is scary, surreal and graphic, among the best ever filmed. Those who walk away from it find themselves in a snowy hell.
Then we start to meet the sketched-in “types” that the script has packed onto that plane and the movie loses its lovely promise, if not its premise. There’s the sensitive guy with brains (Dallas Roberts), the dad missing his kid (Dermot Mulroney), the hothead Latino ex-con (Frank Grillo), the gentle man-mountain (Nonso Anonzie), a few others.
They’re in the middle of nowhere, with no real survival gear and no prayer of being found in this blizzard. Not before they freeze to death. Not before the wolves get them.
Neeson, as Ottway, the hunter who takes over this survivor “pack” and lays out the wolf problem — pack dynamics, territory, feeding range. The men, a rough crew of strangers, must scramble through whiteout conditions, keeping warm, keeping the wolves at bay, on a trek to safety.
The idea from this script by Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers is that the humans revert to a sort of pack mentality, with Ottway as the alpha dog, challenged by others as the weak and the careless are picked off. The characters pick up random bits of backstory and the film begs us to wonder about the woman we see in Ottway’s vivid, hallucinagenic flashbacks.
The spare use of music emphasizes the howling tundra winds, and the production design gets across the bleak, hostile terrain this mismatched crew must master. The dialogue is hard-bitten, but not particularly punchy or pithy. They ha11ve “dog” problems, right?
“I’m much more of a cat person, really.”
Death scenes are handled with a manly grace, with the fatalistic Ottway (Neeson was perfect for this) urging the dying to let it “slide over you.”
But “The Grey” sets up scenarios that it forgets about, such as how to battle a wolf pack — “We kill’em, one at a time.” And I couldn’t decide if they lost track of the wolves in the editing, or if Carnahan realized how “Twilight” fake the beasts looked and limited their scenes in the final edit.
Digital scenery, digitally enhanced snowstorms? good. Digital wolves or werewolves? Bad.
Why, in this post – “Avatar” pixellated era this should be the law is anybody’s guess.
The makings of a solid adventure tale were here. But what came out in “The Grey” is entirely too much like the title — colorless, and grey, and a too digital for its own good.
MPAA Rating:R for violence/disturbing content including bloody images, and for pervasive language
Cast Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, Dermot Mulroney.
Credits: Directed by Joe Carnahan, written by Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, based on a story by Jeffers. Am Open Road release. Running time: 1:52
Not a very good review. Most of your reasons for why you dont like the effects is lack of “great” special effects.
Well, it’s a bit pretentious too. Considering the material. Believable wolves are kind of a deal-killer, in any event.
Agreed. If a key part of the plot, especially one supposed to incite some sort of emotion, looks like a CS students capstone, you have problems.
I don’t think the film sets up scenarios that it forgets about. Just because Neeson says “we kill them, one at a time” doesn’t mean the crew are gonna go an Arnie-esque hunt of the wolves. Neeson just wants vengeance. He is saying this line in hatred. Also, his character is not stupid.He knows better than to fight wolves on their home turf. He is merely Stating what he would like to do.
Carnahan was trying for something more existential, and missed, I think. What Steve said about the digital wolves boils down my thoughts on them more concisely. I cannot find my notes, but there were story threads that must have gotten short shrift in the editing — misplaced.
I know this is obviously just your opinion on the film, but I think you’re off the mark on this one. One point I want to make is that animatronics were used for many of the wolf scenes, not just CG (though it was obvious in some scenes). I really bought into the relationships with the characters (and the Diaz character had a nice arc), and Neeson’s performance I feel is Oscar-worthy (I think it is worth noting that his performance is especially powerful considering his actual wife died a couple years back which I’m sure he drew from). I think you’re being a little too critical toward this film, but you do bring up a couple good points.
Neeson suffers mightily, I’ll give you that. Not an “Oscar” film though. He had a better shot with “Taken,” and Hollywood wouldn’t hear of it.