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The Grey
THE GREY (MA15+)
Released: February 16, 2012
Stars: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo
Since when did Liam Neeson become an action hero?
The strapping Irishman has quietly moved from playing real life figures — Oscar Schindler’s List, Alfred Kinsey and Michael Collins — to playing lethal weapons in the likes of Batman Begins, The A-Team and Taken. He’s so good at stoic, smart tough guys – with the brawn to match the brains.
He’s like the new Lee Marvin or Charles Bronson!
Yet I suspect Neeson may be best remembered for The Grey, a bleak, tense and surprisingly metaphysical survival story set in the snowy Alaskan wilds.
He plays a hunter hired by an Alaskan oil refinery to keep wolves, bears and other beasts from attacking the workers. On the flight home, his plane goes down and only 7 men survive (including Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo and James Badge Dale).
If that’s not bad enough, they’re set upon by a ferociously territorial wolf pack. The cunning beasts work as a team to pick the men off one-by-one. It’s up to Neeson — who’s quite the wolf-whisperer — to lead the men to safety and fight back.
It’s raw, primal, survival of the fittest stuff, with the weather and the wolves both playing relentless grim reapers stalking these macho men – who slowly face the real prospect of their deaths. Indeed, both hellish stalkers strip these macho men of their swagger and bravado, and bring out their fight or flight instincts.
And while the snowy setting recalls films such as Alive or Cliffhanger….and yet the primal narrative is more Alien or Jaws, as man battles beast to the death.
Yet what makes The Grey more than just a snowbound smackdown is its quieter moments around the campfire when the men discuss their fear, the possibility of death, how they might like to go and who they will leave behind. After all, The Grey is all about death and about man facing his mortality.
In several flashback scenes, Neeson recalls a tender moment with his wife that steels him for the fight ahead. And in the film’s most powerful moment, Neeson prepares a mortally wounded man for his imminent death with calming words. “Let it slip over you, nice and warm. Let someone you love take you there”. It’s chilling stuff.
Such contemplative moments of mortality give The Grey a metaphysical element you don’t often see in survival or action films. A few more of these potent moments and The Grey would be elevated to a profound classic on the level of Jaws, Alien, Alive or Deliverance.
Yet Neeson’s real life wife/actress Natasha Richardson died in a skiing accident 3 years ago, and curiously, he’s played a man robbed of the woman he loves in his last few films (Taken, Unknown and now The Grey). So there’s no wonder he’s putting in kicking butt with great performances!
Based on the short story Ghost Walker by Ian MacKenzie Jeffers, The Grey was shot in up to -40c in Canada and the wolves are played by real wolves, dogs and men in dog suits! There’s no computer effects here, and it give the film and authentic feel that ups the tension.
In turns physical, psychological and philosophical, The Grey is like
this generation’s Dirty Dozen, with Neeson morphing into a beast to beat the wolves.
As primal as it is moving, The Grey delivers a surprisingly deep chill to the bone.
Score: 7.5 / 10
