Review of The Grey (2012) by Llamayarmybar — 07 May 2014

The grey is a film that may have gone over the heads of most people that watched it. Particularly when you look at the completely silly reviews that refer to the wolves behavior as being "unrealistic.

" Well you couldn't have missed the point of the film harder if you tried. The Grey is a metaphor, how men deal with that shattering loss of others and themselves. How death is unfair, how it can come without any warning, and how even a strong willed person eventually succumbs to it no matter what they do to fight it off.

The men in the story are all powerful characters who struggle to survive and live, its not about barbaric serial killer-like wolves in a frozen tundra wasteland hell hole chasing them down one by one.

The wolves are symbolic. Each man faced a different death and their is some theories that suggest that they all died in the plane crash, which suggests that they were in a kind of purgatory as well.

It is one of those films that really makes you wonder and even ask yourself: "Why?" Its a painful film, full of merciless deaths, some men are able to come to terms with their end, while others have their lives stolen away by the elements almost without meaning or reason.

Even the main character, a man with the strongest will amongst all of them can't save the men under his command or himself from inevitable death. It is a bleak film, with wonderful cinematography, brutally violent imagery, wonderful performances, and yet a real message embedded within its ambiguous ending sequence.

You can fight death with every last strength in your body, but eventually it will win. I feel that it was a film most audiences had trouble relating to, understanding, and perhaps it may have not appealed as a philosophical piece simply because of its morbid content alone.

In years to come, I hope its revisited and given its proper place as one of the best films of this decade.