Review: THE GREY

The Grey was a really poorly marketed film.

If you saw trailers or TV spots for the film, you probably got one thing out of it: LIAM NEESON FIGHTING FUCKING WOLVES OMG. HE MAKES “GLASS” KNUCKLES OUT OF TINY VODKA BOTTLES AND KILLS TEN THOUSAND WOLVES WHILE SCREAMING.

That is not at all what The Grey is like.

The Grey, believe it or not, is a surprisingly philosophical look at mortality and faith. Also it has killer wolves.

Liam Neeson stars as a sad, quiet, ass-kicking man named Ottway. He works for some oil company, where his job is to have a beard and also to shoot wolves and other animals so they wont eat the oil workers. 

Ottway and the rest of the workers are flying back to Anchorage Alaska when their plane goes bonkers and crashes. A bunch-o-people die, and the survivors go about trying to…survive. Easier said than done, because besides the fact that it’s freezing cold and snowy wind keeps blowing everywhere, they happen to have crashed near the den of a pack of big ass cartoon wolves who want to eat their fucking faces off.

One by one, the men are picked off by wolves, while Ottway tries to lead them to safety. 

The film was directed by Joe Carnahan, who made one good movie once, called Narc. Then everything he did after that was fucking awful. It’s nice to see he’s getting back into the “good movie” game. It looks like he’s been watching some Christopher Nolan films, because the film has a very Nolan-esq vibe to it.

It would have been VERY easy for The Grey to go wrong. I mean, just the premise alone—a bunch of guys fighting off wolves—screams B-MOVIE. But the script, by Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, goes above and beyond what is expected of it. Instead of just having the group of men be stereotypical, underdeveloped hard-asses, the script fleshes each character out, so that when they meet their wolfy demise, it actually is effective. We WANT these guys to survive. They don’t though…(SPOILERZ).

Liam Neeson is always good, even when he’s in garbage. But he does some of his best work in years in The Grey. He doesn’t feel like he’s collecting a paycheck—he feels like he’s embodying the character he’s playing.

It’s important to go into The Grey with a clear head, and NOT expecting it to be about LIAM NEESON: WOLF PUNCHER. It’s also important to go into the film realizing you’re going to walk out feeling really depressed.

A good alternate title for the film would be THE GREY: IS GOD REAL? NO HE’S NOT.

I give The Grey 4 Wolves out of 4.