Movie Review: The Grey (2012)
Joe Carnahan’s (Narc, Smoking Aces, The A-Team) The Grey is all about the redemption of men. When men feel they have failed in their ‘manly duties’. When they feel they haven’t done enough to protect their loved ones, when they haven’t done enough to protect themselves.
Starting off in an oil refinery in Alaska, the bleak landscape and Ottway’s (Liam Neeson) voiceover gives you an idea of the kind of gritty, depressing and dark things to come. Everyone is flying home – wherever that maybe – only the plane ends up crashing and the survivors have to compete against the weather, each other and a pack of deadly and hungry wolves.
Whilst the mirroring of the wolf pack and the pack of survivors isn’t all that subtle, it does work and as the film keeps going this gains more relevance. The wolves are all of the groups combined fears, ready to take them like hell hounds dragging them down into the hands of the Devil. There is an argument that these men are in purgatory or indeed at the gates of hell and the battles against the wolves is not for their lives but for their souls, being that at the beginning of the film Ottway describes the other workers as – ex-cons, fugitives, drifters, a-holes. Men unfit for mankind – could be pointing toward the fact that these other men including Ottway are doomed or at least have done some very bad things in the past that require redemption, the other pointers are that the collected wallets of the dead, are possibly symbolic of the survivors trying to save as many souls as they can on their way through The Grey. However, even if you take the film on face value it works as a thriller too.
Neeson in his more recent roles has become the go to grizzled, old action guy (Taken, Taken 2, The A-Team) which in all fairness he does very well. With the film setting him up as the Alpha male of the survivors, Neeson excels when the script calls for him to assert dominance and it works well when paired with his usual calm and low-key demeanour. The rest of the group Diaz (Frank Grillo), Talget (Dermot Mulroney), Hendrick (Dallas Roberts), Flannery (Joe Anderson) and Burke (Nonso Anozie) all play off each other well, from the moment they board the plane their personalities are defined and all that may seem a little trite and contrived but it makes their decisions later in the film make perfect sense.
Carnahan directs the film well, balancing the moments of peace in the film which gives great emphasis to the times when all hell is breaking loose, however the wolf attack sequences are very blurry and rushed and you don’t see a lot until it is all over. He does use the amazing scenery to his advantage, letting the elements create a stunning backdrop to the story.
The sound design is also very integral to the film. The moments of inner reflection result in muted, muffled sounds and Ottway’s dreams with his wife are quiet yet crystal clear, then of course when the big events occur the sound rumbles, the wolves howl and growl having peering into the background of the film wondering where they will appear next (and if you have surround sound you will be looking over your shoulder).
Carnahan and his writing partner Ian Mackenzie Jeffers (whose short story Ghost Walker is the basis for the film) have created a thoughtful thriller. Musings on fear, survival and life abound but it is the gritty desperation to survive which comes through the most, the want to fight for your life, despite how you might feel about yourself or others.
An underrated thriller that can be dissected by film geeks or just enjoyed as a straight thriller, The Grey is worth your time.