‘The Grey’

As ambiguous and menacing as the name, the new movie from director Joe Carnahan and star Liam Neeson both produces to the effect and disappoints. In truth, the film never defines itself and yet remains enjoyable and entertaining. Neeson is neither at his worst or his best, but forever the veritable tough guy not backing down. That he has a lingering doubt about the future of his life only adds more murk to “The Grey.”

The story is simple and for the most part clear. Neeson is a tough guy and good at what he does, but is troubled. He is involuntarily thrown to the wolves, both literally and figuratively, as the protagonist is forced to endure the desperate ruggedness of the Alaskan back country following his survival from a plane crash, only to be surrounded by other survivors less confident as he. Oh, and there’s man hungry wolves that appear in the dark like the shadowy, mythical creatures we all feared were hiding under our beds growing up.

The scenery is breathtaking, and at times director Carnahan treats the topography with a grace and elegance that for fleeting moments might allow us to fall in love with the territory. These moments are often interlaced with Neeson’s own moments with his wife in flashback, of whom we know nothing about but still feel a grim sense of pain and heartache. It is in these moments this movie reminded me of Charles Martin Smith’s classic tale of man’s relationship with wolves, “Never Cry Wolf.” In “The Grey,” we are engaged with shots of Neeson peering silently into the distance looking for the pack that will eventually confront the survivors. When the movie builds a relationship with the audience and invites them into Neeson’s life, and more intimately into the world he has been thrust into as a castaway we can begin to feel the emotional connection.

But instead we can feel too much a studio’s need for computer generated wolves, the implausible flight from harm into more harm and the relationships between the survivors that promise much but deliver little. And in the end, it does simply that. The movie ends and we are left to enjoy the moments of fright and excitement for what they were on a Friday night. In the end it chose simply to be a popcorn action film, when it had the potential to stand on its own as an emotional epic of one man’s primal instinct to survive in spite of his desire to do otherwise, revealing the depth and complexity that we all know lies within “The Grey.”


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