Grey, The (2011) [Blu-ray]
Action | Adventure | Drama | Thriller

Liam Neeson (Schindler's List, Taken) stars as the unlikely hero Ottway in this undeniably suspenseful and powerful survival adventure. After their plane crashes into the remote Alaskan wilderness, a roughneck group of oil drillers is forced to find a way back to civilization. As Ottway leads the injured survivors through the brutal snow and ice, they are relentlessly tracked by a vicious pack of rogue wolves that will do anything to defend their territory. Adrenaline-fueled, action-packed and loaded with some of the most intense and brutally realistic attack scenes ever filmed, The Grey is being hailed as "a thriller you can sink your teeth into!" (The Washington Post)

Crude oil workers in Alaska are heading home for a 2-week vacation, after working grueling shifts. On their way home, they encounter a vicious storm that brings their plane crashing down in the Alaskan tundra. 8 survivors must find their way to civilization. They are hampered by mysterious wolves.

User Comment: Movie_Muse_Reviews from IL, USA, 27 January 2012 • Liam Neeson the gritty action hero. How unbelievable that at nearly 60 years old, an actor can redefine his career and become more bankable. Neeson has somehow re-channeled the seriousness he brought to dramatic roles into creating utterly convincing heroes in decent (at best) thrillers.

But that's not "The Grey." "The Grey" earns marks far above decent, and Neeson's performance makes it better. I know, the calendar clearly reads January, but that's a matter of maximizing box-office potential in this case. Writer/director Joe Carnahan ("The A-Team") has turned a new leaf in this harrowing wilderness survival thriller, a film as dedicated to exploring the true extent of the human will to live as much as shocking its audience with menacing wolf attacks.

Neeson leads the pack in all manner of ways. Paid to protect oil workers from nature's dangers (especially wolves), Neeson's character Ottway turns out to be a group of drillers' best chance for survival when their plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness near a wolf den. He's far from a boy scout, however, and he's emotionally wounded by the fact that his wife has left him.

Most of the early indicators in the film give you the sense that Neeson will do his usual solemn-faced hero routine that he executes to perfection, but the way the film unfolds (not in terms of plot, but in terms of the quality of the storytelling) asks him to go beyond that. He definitely responds.

When looked at in its most fundamental form, "The Grey" could be considered just another film in which a group of imperiled people die one at a time en route to finding safety. Carnahan, however, slows down that pace so that we can absorb the extent of the danger and imagine ourselves in it. When death does occur, it's visually striking, jaw-dropping and/or thought-provoking as compared to standard efforts at the genre that involve only jump-scare deaths or death by character stupidity.

Only one character, Diaz (Frank Grillo) gets a stereotype as the stubborn self-centered jerk who disagrees with Ottway on purpose. Most movies would've killed him off before he got too annoying, but Carnahan and co-writer Ian Mackenzie Jeffers (who wrote the short story the film's based on), have more interesting plans in store for him.

It's also not just a film about people being hunted by wolves in the wilderness. There's no bloody man vs. wolf climactic battle, unlike what the trailers would have you believe, so film fans prone to take misleading marketing out on the film itself, be prepared. "The Grey" is much more of a suspenseful drama with high-adrenaline scenes lurking around every corner.

As such, the visual style of "The Grey" asks for something different from Carnahan than the over-the-top high-flying nature of his previous two films, "The A-Team" and "Smokin' Aces." The overall tone is gritty and naturalistic, so snow-caked beards without the blistering frostbite makeup.

The action is also more frenetic and gripping. Rather than shooting the action scenes in a traditional sense, he wants the viewer to feel as if they are experiencing them along with the characters. If a character falls from a tree top and hits 20 branches on the way down, that's exactly what the camera's doing. This maximizes the intensity of every major sequence. As for the wolves, they're horrifying, yet never painted as the bad guys. They're just part of nature.

When it comes to issues of faith and the will to survive, that's when "The Grey" really jumps up and above the bar for its genre. The story is told in such a way that when people die, it's not for our entertainment, but to highlight the unpredictable nature of ... nature, and life and death. As Ottway wrestles with these same issues, its Neeson's performance that makes it hit home.

"The Grey" gives its audience the rare gift of genre-film entertainment with some serious food for thought and an ample dose of emotion. Carnahan's choices on how to tell the story, along with an ending not typical of genre films, only make it all the stronger. Both he and Neeson display the true nature of their strengths. Hopefully we've seen only the beginning of Carnahan's potential, and that nature is kind enough to Neeson to let him continue challenging the norm for the standard heroic performance.

Summary: Neeson and Carnahan go above and beyond the survival thriller norms.

User Comment: wwilliams-307-76490 from Canada, 2 March 2012 • As I guy who has spent a lot of time in Canada's wilderness these past 40 years, most of it in wolf country, the wolf behaviour depicted in this movie is ridiculous.

It begins with a scene in which a lone timber wolf charges three grown men standing near a truck. No wolf would ever behave like this. Despite all the time I've spent in areas with large wolf populations (with lots of tracks around), I've only ever caught fleeting glimpses of three or four of them,and that's when I was by myself, unarmed and completely vulnerable.

The idea that a pack of wolves would attempt to prey on a group of men is also ridiculous. There has been only one documented predatory wolf attack in North America in the past 200 years, and that involved a large pack and a solitary hiker in Saskatchewan a few years ago.

As any wolf biologist would tell you, you can walk up to a pack of wolves feeding on a fresh kill, completely unarmed, and the wolves will scatter. They'd stay and fight a grizzly, but one whiff/sight of human and they'd quickly turn and run.

The size of the wolves in this movie is another misrepresentation. The biggest timber wolf on record, when they emptied 20 pounds of meat from his stomach, was a male weighing 120 pounds. The average male is around 90 pounds. A lone wolf would be a very poor match for a 200 pound man armed with a knife.

The plot revolved around the wolf's protection of their den. Stupid. Wolves only den when the alpha female gives birth in the spring. And they sure wouldn't be driving the men toward the den in that situation - quite the opposite. Nor do they scatter the bones of all their kills around the den - that would only draw other predators, like grizzlies. Instead, the adults eat at site of the kill and regurgitate the meat for the pups when they get back to the den.

Finally, our so-called wolf expert devised all sorts of idiotic defences against the wolves, but ignored the one thing any group of true woodsmen would do in a similar situation (i.e. facing wolves on crack). That's use their knives to make spears. A group of men with spears would be impregnable to a pack of wolves, no matter how large, as no predator likes to risk injury.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. If you're going to spend millions on a movie, wouldn't it make sense to spend $10 on a good wolf book first?

Summary: This is the dumbest wildlife movie ever.

[CSW] -3.4- The movie is way more than just a survival/action flick. The movie is very philosophical and asks the question "is life a constant struggle from the day we are born, until the day we die". On top of that it poses the question to a bunch of misfits and miscreant. And on top of that it asks it while they are in probably the most hostile and life-threatening situation they have ever faced. Well so much for the pleasantries. You will have to assume that the wolves are a bit supernatural and the temperature isn't really is cold as it should be in order to suspend your disbelief. And they throw in a little question about the existence of God. So you see that the reality of this movie is that it's a fairy tale for adults, an allegory about life, death, love and survival. And because it's a fairytale for adults it can have all the grim and unrealistic elements that good fairytales always seem to have. Know in advance that this film is not for everyone, but it also isn't a bad film. Be sure and watch the very end of the credits for one final but very brief closing scene.
[V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box 9.2/10 and really does enhance this movie.

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