These fanged beasts make Jaws look like a minnow.
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Based on the short story “Ghost Walker” by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers
Directed by Joe Carnahan who co-wrote the script with Jeffers
Running Time: 117 minutes
Opened Today
“Wolves to the left of them. Wolves to the right of them. Wolves up front and in their faces. Into the mouths of the wolves went arms, legs, heads, buttocks, torsos as well as fingers and toes” — What A.L. Tennyson might have written if he had survived a plane crash in an Alaskan hinterland and fled for his life from demonic beasts with fangs that could terrify grizzlies.
Into the last good fight I’ll ever know
Live and die on this day
Live and die on this day
A coterie of oil riggers – a few but not all caricatures of brawling working class roughnecks only good for barroom fights – are flying to R&R (home, other respites) after working arduous shifts for a company that could care less if they live or die. Their plane encounters a ferocious storm, causing a crash in an hostile Alaskan wilderness.
They are convinced by John Ottway – an existentialist ever there was one, played by Liam Neeson, hired by the refinery to keep bears and other Alaskan wilderness beasts from attacking the company’s assets – that their only chance of survival is to trek to a sanctuary that Ottway believes may exist. He doesn’t promise that it exits. But it could. Better what might be than the will be from the ferocious fangs and blizzards on the horizon and about to encircle them.
The dialogue is superbly taunt and earthy realistic that the company won’t expedite a search for them, and that they can’t hold the wolves at bay –and, by the way, who the hell is John Ottway, whose telescopic weapon of choice was rendered useless because of the crash? The survivors grudgingly choose to trek. Hostile terrain and weather make every step treacherous, preternatural wolves that can wolf down grizzlies wolf at their heels.
Who are these men? Why are they here? Why did they survive? Will they survive? A great existentialist adventure, their life and death choices unfolding as they channel their inner demons. Their eventual collective coming together, as they assuaged their personal demons, is deftly handled. In worse hands, it could have been very corny and politically correct.
Audiences should prepared to be viscerally terrified on raw gut levels experienced only in the best supernatural-horror-scifi-action-movies, the likes of WOLFEN, ALIEN, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, knowing that if they blink, flinch or divert their eyes even for a brief moment, they could miss a sumptuous moment (and, thus, have to see the movie again [and in some cases again and again]) to put it all together. [This writer had to see ALIEN seven times.] This principal applies to movies the likes of SCHINDLER’S LIST, unrelenting horror/terror in an epic movie sans a supernatural dimension. One viewing is not enough.
Be on alert, however.
The early part of THE GREY may cause some (many?) to experience momentary self-deception. They may feel a flush of similarities or experience déjà vu, even, but they should resist the siren’s lull of images of other outdoor action adventures the likes of FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (including the remake) or DELIVERANCE (and any clones 1, 2,) edging into their consciousness. There will be hints but THE GREY is the prince of all. However, if you are one who is lulled, the deception only adds to the experience of seeing movie making at its best.
Except for one scene early in the killing fields of the Alaskan wilderness, what seems to be familiar in this movie is inconsequential and to be ignored.
Besides Neeson and Dermot Mulroney, this reviewer couldn’t clearly recognize the other cast members whose acting was so-ooo-ooo good that there were moments when he thought, yes; and then moments when he thought, no. Where has he seen these guys before? Has he seen these guys before? Who are these guys — Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie and James Badge Dale? That decision by Director Carnahan to cast virtually unknown actors feeds the suspense, which feeds the terror that feeds the horror.
Neeson’s Ottway serves as a narrator for the audience as well as the survivors who are unarmed, obviously befuddled, clearly out-matched by nature’s elements and the diabolical fangs nipping at their heels and who are advised about the next possible step in surviving – usually after one of their own has been wolfed down.
From the production notes: If few of those names pop out, there’s good reason. The key to casting was finding believable actors who could endure the physical rigors but who weren’t easily identifiable. Says Mulroney, “In most films, if you see a bunch of people getting on a plane and you already recognize six of them, then you already know who’s going to survive the movie, and that kind of blows it.” Other info from production notes: THE GREY marks the second collaboration between Carnahan and Neeson who teamed for the 2010 action-comedy THE A-TEAM. Producer and executive producer on THE GREY are Ridley and Tony Scott, who were also behind THE A-TEAM.
The A-Team was silly.
Gregg Morris can be reached at gmorris@hunter.cuny.edu