The Grey

Friday, 27 January 2012

The Grey is a well-made survival movie, thriller and horror film all rolled up in one; a kind of cross between Deliverance and The Thing but lacking the ‘bite’ (pun intended) of either of them. If there’s a bit of the A-Team in the mix, it might be because Director Joe Carnahan, Producers Ridley and Tony Scott and actor Liam Neeson guaranteed the testosterone levels in that film, too. In the Grey, a plane carrying rowdy oil rig workers home on leave crashes in the Alaskan wilderness. Led by John Ottway, (Neeson), the seven survivors try to reach civilisation while marauding packs of wolves pick them off one by one.

Bucking all stereotypes, the imposing Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List, Michael Collins) is hitting stride as an action hero as he approaches 60, here, playing a world-weary hunter paid to protect oil rig staff by shooting wolves. When the film opens, the memories of his beautiful wife, and the loneliness of life among (mainly younger) people he can’t relate to, drive him to attempt suicide.

He stops himself by repeating, ‘live and die another day’, the last line of his father’s favourite ditty. The poem encourages people not to give up, but go, ‘once more into the fray.’ Ironically, after the crash when dying would be easy, Ottway engages with life and heads, literally, into the fray.

This might be a man’s movie, but women in the audience will also admire the atmospheric cinematography by Masanobu Takayanagi and the convincing production design by John Willett. The wolves are the curious bit. Neither realistic animals nor computer generated sci-fi monsters, they’re a combination of trained wolf, puppets and actors in wolf costume. Whatever they are, you get the idea that this isn’t the time for Ottway to be without his rifle.

Although wolves generally don’t hunt in large packs and don’t attack humans where wild prey or domestic animals are available, these wolves seem to have a personal vendetta against Ottway. Ottway seems to sense this and he’s not going gentle into that good night.

As you would expect in this type of movie, each of the men have their own personalities and ‘issues’ that have to be worked out, usually, with Ottway demonstrating they’d be better off listening to him. The characterisations are sketchy, but there’s only one character that counts in this movie and it’s the cool face of stoicism, Ottway.

Although Carnaham keeps the trek tense and eventful, early on you might get a sinking feeling in your stomach when you realise that for 90 minutes after the set up, you’ll be watching a dwindling group of unarmed, freezing, and hungry men bond together against a common enemy. Those who like thrillers about doomed expeditions won’t be disappointed.