Grade: C-
Starring: Liam Neeson, Dallas Roberts, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Nonso Anozie, and Joe Anderson
PREMISE: A grieving widower must take charge of the survivors of an oil rig crew after their plane crashes and try to lead them to safety through blizzards while a vicious pack of wolves traces their every move.
RATED R for blood and gore, violence, strong language (including some sexual references), and some disturbing images
--When the screen went black during a moment of high tension late in the highly-anticipated Liam Neeson vehicle The Grey, there was that usual hushed silence as everyone in the theatre tried to grasp the break in the action. What's gonna happen next? was probably the most common thought in the dozens of heads in the room, followed closely by it's not over, is it? Then the first credits came up, signaling that the movie was, in fact, over, and the sound of people exhaling filled the air. But a lot of those breaths were noises of disbelief (one even sounded a lot like an incredulous "what?"). Then, from the back of the theatre, came a loud, derisive laugh. Heartless as it may seem, I identified with the laugher, because he and I both realized what everyone else was trying to grasp: we'd been duped.
--The Grey is about a man who's name you can't understand (but it doesn't really matter since he's played by a star as magnetic as Neeson) who, well, you can't quite tell what he does for a living. As a matter of fact, you don't even know where he is at the beginning of the film, or why he's there. You do know that he pines for someone, a pretty lady (Anne Openshaw, who has no lines and less than a minute of total screen time in a few brief flashbacks), who is, well, you don't know--she must have a name, must have had a connection to Neeson, must have meant a lot to him, and must have either gone somewhere or died of something, but, again, you don't know and never find out. The movie's early moments are narrated by Neeson, but with his deep, accented voice, you can't even be sure you're understanding all the words.
--Sorry, but that's how I saw it. The Grey centers around Ottway, a man who shoots a wolf with an impressive rifle in the film's opening minutes, has probably done it before, might even be employed doing it, and regards the task with a kind of nobility. He's stationed at a land-based Alaskan oil rig, inhabited mostly by thugs and ex-cons who like to drink, brawl, smoke, and cuss. He writes long, mournful letters to someone only ever referred to as My Dearest One, and almost kills himself early on because of his burning desire to be with that same dearest one. Then he gets on a plane, probably headed for the Lower 48. The plane experiences turbulence and then crashes in Snowy Somewhere, the remote wilderness of either Alaska or Canada. About as soon as Ottway gets with the six other crash survivors (on a packed plane; the crew also died), they begin being menaced by wolves, wherein Ottway reveals his impressive knowledge of their territorial and pack tendencies, and the inner workings of their predators' brains. Knowing the crash sight, what with piles of dead bodies, splatters of blood, and burning fuel, is an obvious beacon as to the whereabouts of humans, the band of survivors flees to the nearest wooded area, where they keep fires, eat what they can, and get continually menaced by wolves. Soon enough, people start dying, which is only appropriate since Ottway's favorite saying, something he got from a poem his dear old departed dad wrote, is "Live or die on this day."
--That really is about it. The plane crash and the scenes of survivors gathering resources, building fires, and trying, briefly, to get to know one another, are involving enough that the hollow center of the film takes a while to emerge. But emerge it does, or, at least, it did to me. All this movie features are humans and wolves (give or take a few blizzards and some snow-covered trees). That's it. I understand they're supposed to be in remote nowhereville, but that's not a very promising thing to build a movie on--the protagonists have no destination, no plan, nothing. They find a tree stump with a tag, wherein Ottway decides loggers have worked in the area, and someone tries to encourage someone else by shouting "there could be a cabin right down there!". There could, sure, but, really, they're just walking. They find a river and decide, well, it's as good an idea as any to follow a river when you're out in the wild, so, well, why not follow it? Just don't ever fall behind, or fall down, or get into a vulnerable position, because you are so dead once that happens. Seriously, the wolves are lurking just offscreen the entire film.
--The wolves don't matter. It's scary because they can creep up and surprise you (as they do, to startling enough effect, more than once in this movie), and because they live in packs, and because they make a hell of a lot of unnerving noise at night and because they actually exist and do those things, but, really, they're just there; they could just as easily be terrorists, zombies, aliens, lions, bears, sharks, vampires, dinosaurs, diseases or flipping asteroids for all the difference it makes. This is a movie that stacks up a body count, and builds suspense doing it, just because. People we don't care about die quickly and people we're supposed to care about die almost as quickly, often after embarrasingly-obvious scenes of foreshadowing.
--This movie is not about the people, other than Neeson, obviously, but the actors do try. Their names aren't really important, but, in any case, they're essentially defined by short, clean-cut descriptive tidbits: The Really Talkative One, the Quietly Encouraging One, the One Who Loves His Daughter Back Home, The Black One (sorry, but that's how it goes), the Asshole-y One, and the One Played By Liam Neeson. Neeson-getting to speak with his natural Irish brogue after working hard to hide it in his two breakout hits, Taken and Unknown-is serviceable enough. He really does have a magnetic screen presence, and not just because he's a star, because he has an accent, or because he's a man of considerable stature. He's a good emoter who knows how to play intensity like he knows the back of his hand, he's perfectly-believable mixing it up with mouthy guys or even with wolves, and his noble features easily fold into themselves in sorrow and induce sympathy from us. The blandness of this film isn't Neeson's fault; he gives exactly the performance required, perhaps even a little more in a fear, grief, and rage-induced tirade late in the proceedings. This won't hurt Neeson's growing street cred as a graybeard ass-kicker at all.
--Besides Neeson, the only actor who really makes an impression is Frank Grillo, who plays the cocky, talkative asshole of the group. His part is a cliche-though, amazingly, in this die-humans-die flick, the asshole doesn't die first or even second-and he overacts chunks of it, but he rewards our patience with a few hearty laughs and a moving final scene.
--The film's production values are good, other than the shaky-cam style of filming important action that so often mars this sort of body-count flick (though I imagine it must be hard to film it any more substantially when the baddies your protagonists are fighting are 100% computer-generated). The scene of the plane crashing-seen from the inside, rather like in Tom Hanks' Cast Away-with people screaming and lights flashing and debris flying around, is thrilling and horrifying and well done. The snowy landscapes are all picture-esque. The yammering, growling and, of course, howling of the film's terrors-almost always while they're offscreen or out of sight-is skin-crawlingly effective. There's also a late scene where a character sits alone and his breathing begins to speed up as he, like we, hears the racket of approaching beings. And there is a certain poignancy to a late montage of all the characters we have met-who we can recognize-in pictures with people they love (wives, children, etc...).
--But, again, the real problem of the film is its pointlessness. And I've seen a lot of movies with pull-the-rug-out-from-under-the-viewers endings (The Wrestler, Buried, The Last King of Scotland, Warrior) lately, but in all those films, with the possible exception of Scotland, it really meant something. Not here. Here it seems like the filmmakers ran out of ideas. Like they knew the movie was getting long and the last expendable person (i.e. the last person who was not Neeson) was dead and the movie had to end somewhere, so, why not here, at the height of the action when the audience is amped? No wonder someone in my theatre laughed-at least they could smile about it. Most people were probably pissed that they got screwed out of the climactic fight.
So, do I recommend it?
Can't tell? I suppose it would make a decent rental, when you haven't paid a bunch of money and built up a bunch of anticipation to see it, but it's nothing you have to see. And The Grey is definitely not for kids. The gore isn't mind-boggingly horrible (except for one over-the-top scene where a guy mockingly cuts the head off a dead wolf), but there is a lot of blood. There is also, as I mentioned, a lot of profanity and some very sudden scares. (There is also a not-so-subtle theme of humanism, godlessness and nihilism that will offend some viewers and merely depress others; add that to the lack-of-happy-ending [lack of ending at all, actually] and it's a pretty poor statement the filmmakers are making)
Bottom Line (I promise):
Neeson, as ever, is solid, and there are some tense scenes and some mildly-involving group-bonding scenes, but the film goes nowhere, except to a big letdown.
The Grey (2012)
Directed by Joe Carnahan
Based on the short story "Ghost Walker" by Ian McKenzie Jeffers
Written by Joe Carnahan
Rated R for gore, bloody violence, strong language, and disturbing images
Length: 117 minutes
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