The Grey (7/10)

The _ Grey

The Grey (7/10)

by Tony Medley

Run time 115 minutes (although rated at over 2 hours, that must include credits).

Not for children.

For two of the past three years, Liam Neeson has given filmgoers a wonderful present of a terrific thriller to start the movie year, Taken in 2009, and Unknown in 2011, both of which received my top rating. He's trying again this year, but this time it’s a film with a message, which lessens my enthusiasm.

Underneath this tense Neeson thriller is a thought-provoking allegory about man's relationship with nature in the guise of a battle to the death between an Alaskan wolf pack and oil workers who survive a brilliantly filmed plane crash. Director-writer (with Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, who wrote the short story, Ghost Walker, upon which the film is based) Joe Carnahan stacks the decks by making the victims of the plane crash, and the combatants vs. the wolves, employees of an oil company working in the Alaska wilderness, which is where the big controversy is about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), which the Democrats unrealistically virulently oppose. The idea is that these guys are invading a pristine wilderness which the wolves are protecting.

To start the allegory, Liam is an unhappy guy employed by the oil company to kill wolves who threaten its employees in the Alaska wilderness. After the plane crash, he's the guy who is being stalked by wolves.

While thrillers often have to combat plot holes and things that are less than credible, The Grey has more than you can shake a stick at. While the movie is tense, there are just too many things that don't stack up to make this as memorable as Taken and Unknown. I'm not giving any spoilers here when I list some of the many things that bothered me, although I would dearly love to comment on the ending.

First, of course, is the plane crash. The way Carnahan presents the plane crash is nothing short of spectacular. Told from the POV of the passengers, this is probably exactly the way this type of crash would occur. Those scenes are this movie at its best.

What's simply not credible, however, is that in such a horrific crash, where the plane is almost totally destroyed, anyone would survive, much less seven people. And that they could survive without so much as a scratch is preposterous.

Then Neeson presents himself to his fellow survivors as an expert on survival. So, even though they are threatened by a pack of wolves, he insists that they leave the relative comfort and safety of the crash site, where the remains of the plane provide shelter and protection against both the environment and the wolves, he insists that they all traverse open snowfields to get to the "trees." As if being in the forest is going to protect them from the wolves? I think that most survival experts advise staying with a crash so that rescuers might better be able to find them. If they wander off, there's no way rescuers could have a clue as to where they might have gone. Then, where's the common sense that being in the woods provides safety from a pack of wolves? But if they stay with the plane, the allegory fails.

Then they start walking (who knows where?) and come to a canyon. They are on one side and want to get to the other. It appears to be about 50 feet wide. How to get to the other side? Simple, in this movie. They have one of them run and jump. Instead of going straight down, which would happen if nature controlled here, he miraculously appears on the other side so he can tie a rope together for them to all shinny across the rope to get to the other side. This isn't a Superman movie, so I can't imagine anybody buying this.

I was looking forward to a film that made me feel the coldness of what they were going through. One of the best films for capturing temperature was Body Heat (1981), a terrific noir set in a small town in Florida during a heat wave. In that film director Lawrence Kasdan and stars William Hurt and Kathleen Turner made everyone in the audience sweat as they portrayed the way the debilitating heat affected them. I was expecting this film to capture the cold of being trapped outside in sub-zero temperatures. But neither the director nor the actors made the biting cold a part of the film. They didn't shiver, ice didn't form on their faces or beards (oh, sometimes Neeson had snow on his face, but it didn't seem to make him cold), there was no frostbite, there was hardly ever any indication that they were even cold! (To give the other side, my companion at the movie felt cold throughout).

Worse, Carnahan seems to be from the Terrence Malick school of directing and loves to zoom in on Neeson's face as he thinks…and thinks…and thinks. He does a lot of thinking in this movie and we are with him every step of the way.  There's more, but what's the point?

All in all, although the film was tense and entertaining, it was a disappointment. To paraphrase Marlon Brando, it coulda been better.

January 19, 2012

Tony Medley is a film critic accredited by the Motion Picture Association of America. His reviews may be read in several newspapers as well as on Rottentomatoes.com, the Movie Review Query Engine, mrqe.com, and at www.tonymedley.com. In addition, he’s written numerous newspaper and magazine articles for publications like The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Magazine, The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and Good Housekeeping Magazine.

Tony Medley is a Silver Life Master in the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), an ACBL-certified Director, and the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Bridge. With over 100,000 copies in print, it is the best selling basic bridge book. He is also the author of UCLA Basketball: The Real Story, available on Kindle, and Sweaty Palms: The Neglected Art of Being Interviewed, first published in 1978 and now in its third edition with over half a million copies in print, the first book ever written about the job interview for the interviewee.