The Grey

Here’s yet another movie that was advertised in such a way as to cheapen the content and make it more appealing to the broader audience of people who just want to see Liam Neeson punch some wolves. That said, I don’t know if it would be doing as well as it is if they’d gone the more honest route. It’s been getting great reviews from pretty much everybody though so that’s a good pull if the general public actually pays attention to that.

Even though the trailer is a lie, The Grey does employ some common horror/action movie cliches, such as plane crashes and a bunch of people getting picked off one by one; but that’s just superficial to the real soul of the film. It’s about this guy played by Liam Neeson who’s pretty much ready to give up on everything, but in the face of a force outside of his control, his human survival instinct kicks in and makes him a leader. The rest of the cast is far from the incidental cannon fodder of elimination-style horror movies too; they all seem like real people rather than one-note stereotypes, and even the ones with the most limited screen time leave a lasting impression.

Lately I’ve grown to love action movies with a lot of breathing room, e.g. Drive, and this is definitely one of those. It’s hard to run in the snow and the wolves don’t even show up that much anyway. Much of the movie is just discussion of how doomed these people are, and it’s great. The action scenes are quite good too.

It’s a very human movie. Humanistic I’d say. There’s a somewhat pronounced element of religious questioning and relying on oneself instead of a distant god, and it really works quite well without going too far for semi-religious people to accept, I think. Neeson’s descriptions of his idea of what happens when you die seem starkly poetic.

It’s definitely not a perfect movie though. The whole thing with the wolves couldn’t really be done right without real wolves, and the animatronic/cg solution they came up with is just kind of embarrassing in parts. That said, the whole thing with people getting upset about the portrayal of the wolves as unstoppable death machines is pretty darn wrong. Neeson’s character explains several times that they are basically in the animal’s den and are therefore seen as much more of a threat than normal.

It’s good. You might not want to see it right now if you’ve got a flight coming up though.