The Grey: Movie Review

Watching this film is quite an experience. It's the reason we go to the movies, to escape and share an experience, and oh my what an experience it was. Thinking about the movie literally got me lost on my way home from the theater and has haunted me in all the days since.

Here is a unique film where you likely least suspected. The trailers make it seem as though it's Liam Neeson vs. a hungry pack of wolves, and in a way it is, but it is truly so much more than that. More than just another man vs. nature survival story. This is a film about the choices we make in life and the fate that awaits us as consequence.

The Grey could be viewed differently depending on your perception: 1) as a group of men trying to not get eaten by wolves, or 2) a film about men coming to terms with life and accepting their fate. If you are a literal viewer you probably saw the first version, but if you're able to sit back and enjoy the broad picture like I was, you were in for quite a treat. Director Joe Carnahan takes us on a bleak, relentlessly cold and cruel epic journey with the look and feel of poetry.

"A job at the end of the world" are the first words uttered by Neeson's character Ottway in the film. He is a sniper working for an oil company at an oil rig in the middle of the Alaskan wild, far off from civilization. His job is to shoot the wolves that try to attack the crew members. These men are ex-cons, alcoholics, abusive and all unable to handle their lives in the real world and have been sent here as a last resort. All of their choices led them here.

Liam Neeson, fresh off fame from Taken and Unknown, has established himself quite a niche as the grizzled action hero. Here he leads a rough group of oil workers into the bleak, freezing Alaskan wild after their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere. The crash scene was one of the most realistic and intense scenes I can remember seeing in film. There they find out quickly that they are not alone, and in fact trespassing on wolf territory and are not welcome, as the eight survivors slowly begin getting picked off one by one.

The film's tension is ever present and growing as it moves forward. Meanwhile, the men continue to trot along in the snow and we get to understand them through the conversations they share with each other. Through calm and patient direction from Carnahan, the viewer is invited in and able to feel and share the same journey with these men and urge us to pull for their survival. We grow to understand and empathize with these men at the same time as they begin to understand themselves.

In one of the film's best scenes, a man who earlier has rebelled against the group and very much an outcast from the group has been injured and can no longer go forward. He sits down on a log beside a riverbank and stares out at the beautiful mountains and their snowy peaks in the distance. Ottway urges him to keep going as there may be help not far down the river, but he says no. He's done. There's nothing left for him to go back to. This is it for me, I couldn't ask for anything more, he says, admiring the view. He shakes hands with Ottway, thanks him, then tells him his real name instead of the nickname everyone called him. Here you can really appreciate how far these men have come from the beginning.

One of the biggest criticisms I've seen with this film has been the fictional portraits they paint of wolves behavior and that they were too CGI. The way I see it, they didn't have to be real. For me, they were all stuck in a version of hell, from which there was no escape. These men, in a way, were all lone wolves and fated in every way to be stuck in the situation they're in. Understandably, these wolves are not real. In the night, their eyes glow like demons, haunting them, continuing to come back and hunt them down for their sins.

It ends where it seemed to have been leading up to the entire film. Right in the middle of the wolves den, exactly what Ottway had intended to lead his men away from. But fate always has its way. Ottway, not a man of god by any stretch, finds peace after a short prayer for his fallen comrades in the final moments as the alpha wolf approaches him. And just at the point where you think any man would give up, he finds strength. "Don't be afraid," she says, a vague memory of his dying wife we see through flashbacks.

What do you do when you're faced with an unbeatable situation? You keep moving forward, you give yourself a fighting chance to survive. You do whatever it takes. You run towards your problem and face it like a man. And he did just that, as the film ends with Ottway lunging toward the wolf for the final fight. You have to stay until after the final credits roll to get a final picture. We don't know who won, but we do see that there was a real fight, a real battle, and that's really what matters most.