Review of The Grey (2012) by Jordan R — 20 Aug 2014

Poor Liam Neeson seems to be having a hard time of it in the snowy wastes of Alaska. Working at an isolated oil refinery and killing wolves for a living is clearly not giving him a great deal of job satisfaction and he's also got some inner turmoil playing on his mind as well.

His luck really runs out when the plane taking him and a bunch of his colleagues crashes into the side of a mountain during a blizzard. Marooned in the wilderness, the survivors are faced with a long trek to reach civilisation or staying put and freezing to death.

To add to their woes, they seem to have ended up in the territory of a rampaging pack of killer wolves and they have nothing but a few sticks to defend themselves with. This movie is a bit confused. Is it a thriller, a horror or a survival against the odds tale? It doesn't seem to know or be comfortable with the idea of being one thing or the other.

The disparate group of oil workers, thrown together in this extreme situation don't really get the chance to develop their characters and all seem far from suited to the outdoor life. Only Neeson's character of Ottway has much of a clue of how to survive or what to do, the rest being somewhat burdensome and merely serving the function of walking dog food.

I really wanted this to be a tense movie about the steel of the human survival instinct pitted against the cruel and overwhelming odds of frozen north. Instead, many of the characters were instantly forgettable and posed as much of a challenge to the marauding wolves as would a pack of Brownies.

Each man is wrestling with some inner demons, mostly centred around family, but far from adding depth and giving them a greater urge to survive, it becomes rather tedious and superficial. I loved the setting of the movie.

The stark white of the landscape and the unremitting snow storm in which the men find themselves made an interesting backdrop and could have made for a really claustrophobic atmosphere, focused on a tight-knit group but I found my interest waning as much of the human interest was just padding to an otherwise simple plot.

I didn't hate the movie, I just felt it could have delivered a bigger punch and been a more powerful tale. Sadly, and surprisingly, this movie was a little bland and lacking in teeth.