The Grey

I think this film wanted to be two or three things. A survival tale of men battling the Alaskan winter wilderness after their plane crashes, a personal story of the protagonist contemplating his despair after his wife's death, and a monster movie involving vicious wolves. I think it succeeds mostly on the first front.

Liam Neeson is an Irish oil refinery worker, John Ottway, in Alaska. The beginning segment shows snippets of flashbacks of him wishing his wife were with him--they are either broken up or she is dead, the film at this point doesn't tell us which, just that they are apart and he is longing for her. A shift of men at this refinery are due to take some R&R in Anchorage, and board a dedicated plane to take them there. But the plane crashes in the middle of nowhere, and there are just a handful of survivors.

Ottway, who worked as a sniper to kill wolves who were a threat to the refinery, seems to have the most survival experience and tries to gather the survivors to make a trek to someplace nearer civilization. But the men's personalities clash and yet they have to cooperate with each other, especially when their common enemy are the wolves who are threatened by the men's existence and follow and attack them.


I think the film makes Ottway too much of the hero and doesn't allow any of the other men to have any intelligence to contribute to their dilemma. Ottway has all the knowledge and tricks and everyone else is just a common schlub. They each have a distinguishing characteristic to set them off from the rest--the blowhard, the talkative guy who jinxed their trip, the black guy, etc. but little else is known of them except what they reveal about their families as their time of death nears. I only knew Dermot Mulroney from the rest of cast but although some of the dialogue is a bit lame, the acting was generally good all around.  The other men are played by James Badge Dale, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, Nonso Anozie, and Joe Anderson.

The plot about Ottway missing his wife is jerking us to feel emotionally connected to him--some beautiful woman he is in bed with and then we see she is ill and I assume dies. Other than these visuals we know nothing about her, she is just a fantasy object to the audience, something for Ottway to consider committing suicide for and thus making his survival tale a "to be or not to be" where he has a reason to die as well as a reason to live.

The wolf sequences as in most monster movies involve a lot of jerky camera work that doesn't show much, growling that sounding more like lions, everything to make them as scary seeming as possible, but the attacks are always shown in the dark or off camera or something like that so we don't get a see mano-a-mano fight for survival between man and wolf--just that the wolf attacks and man dies. I found the wilderness survival sequences more exciting, terrifying and emotionally involving.

The scenery is pretty nicely incorporated and nicely shot as well. The action looks like it was done outdoors, and I didn't notice any obvious CGI in regards to the weather except for some cold breaths (which I have never seen done convincingly in CGI).