Movie review – The Grey

The Grey
Dir. Joe Carnahan
Starring: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, and Frank Grillo

Around the time Liam Neeson was getting into a Taipei Death Match (a boxing match with broken glass fastened to your hands) with a vicious, snarling wolf, I realized that I adored The Grey. If only the sound f/x crew had dubbed in a “snikt!” noise when Neeson hooked that wolf in the face, I would not hesitate to call The Grey the best movie of 2012.

What can I say? I’m a sucker for any of Liam Neeson’s films. I think he’s an actor whose body of work goes overlooked far too often. An idea as implausible and recklessly stupid as The Grey holding my attention for the entire runtime should be enough of a testament to how awesome Neeson really is.

Liam Neeson and about a half-dozen folks who aren’t Liam Neeson are all on the same Alaskan oil drilling team. Their plane crashes, stranding them in the middle of the Alaskan tundra, and leaving them completely helpless as a veritable army of wolves surrounds them. Let the bitching about the unfair portrayal of wolves as bloodthirsty monsters commence.

I find it funny that I liked The Grey as much as I did. It occurs to me that, save for Liam Neeson, I should have hated every second of it. The writing was stale, the premise was ludicrous, and the CGI wolves were almost as bad as they were in the Twilight series. And yet somehow, all this works in the movie’s favour. With an estimated budget of $34 million , it really is an A-movie with B-movie sensibilities. I recommend The Grey with the same grain of salt that I recommended My Name is Bruce with. Just get ready to suspend your disbelief a wee bit more than you’d normally have to at the movies and you’ll be fine. Also, be sure to stick around after the credits. The post-credits scene isn’t much, but it manages to supplement the ending quite nicely.

Kyle Leitch
Contributor