After inflicting The A-Team on the world in 2010, Joe Carnahan seemed poised to become something of a Michael Bay figure, making very loud, very busy action movies that were too long and generally unpleasant to watch. I really, really, really hated The A-Team, so I was not completely sold on watching The Grey, despite a very exciting trailer that showed star Liam Neeson preparing to fight a wolf more or less barehanded, taping a knife into one fist and several knuckles full of broken glass on the other. I heard good things about it the longer time went on, so when my wife rented the movie for us, I sat down to watch with some trepidation, but with a degree of optimism I might not otherwise have had after the A-Team debacle.
I will say at the very outset of this review, before I say anything else, that The Grey is far and away a better film than The A-Team. Not only is it narratively more cohesive, but it completely jettisons the hyperactive filmmaking techniques that literally gave me a headache while watching that other film and delivers up a truly surprising, thoughtful and suspenseful story.
Liam Neeson stars at John Ottway, a man hired by a huge, unnamed oil conglomerate to live in the frozen wasteland of northern Alaska and protect the other employees from deadly attacks by the wildlife, especially wolves. With his rifle in hand, Ottway is a killing machine, but lest you think that this is another variation of the kind of character Neeson plays in the Taken films, Ottway is quickly revealed to be a psychologically tortured man who has lost pretty much all of his will to live. The film opens with a voiceover narrating the content of a letter he writes to his former wife, though the reason for their parting is not explained until well into the film. The letter is tantamount to a suicide note.
Ottway has nothing in common with the rowdy wildcatters that populate this outpost at the end of the world, and he seems as glad as he’s capable of feeling when it’s time to return to civilization. Boarding a flight out of the snowy wastes, he anticipates… something, but his plans are interrupted by the sudden and catastrophic malfunction of the plane, which goes down in a harrowing sequence that leaves all but a handful of the other passengers dead. It’s ten below zero on the open ice and snow and supplies are minimal. Moreover, the landscape is infested by aggressive wolves attracted by the smell of available flesh.
