The Grey

The Grey is a perfectly acceptable but not transcendent man-versus-nature film that has a predictable template that has been used in all sorts of genre films--a group of people, hunted by some sort of opposing force, are picked off one by one.

The film, directed ably by Joe Carnahan, stars Liam Neeson, who has found a reliable career as an action star. He plays a sniper employed by an oil company in the extreme north of Alaska who kills wolves. I wonder how you end up with a job like that--Craigslist? The few scenes of life in a place like that (I assume it's a place like Barrow) are vividly etched, and Neeson's voiceover narration, a letter to this wife, tell us that the place is mostly made up of misfits.

Neeson has lost his wife, and momentarily puts his gun in his mouth. But he doesn't pull the trigger, and boards a plane for Anchorage (has he quit? On vacation? We don't know). The plane goes down, and there are seven survivors, and Neeson, clearly a man who knows his way around the wilderness, organizes them. When wolves show up, Neeson suggests they make for the treeline.

The film is tautly written and paced, and doesn't allow for too much drag. A person dies every ten to fifteen minutes, not all by wolf attack. The ending may be realistic, but I get the sense that the writers, including Carnahan, knew how to get themselves out of it.

I did find the animatronic wolves unconvincing. It looks like they didn't use any real wolves, at least not in any proximity to the actors. That's too bad, because at times it looks like the actors are wresting with Black Tooth (this reference will mean something only to those old enough to remember Soupy Sales).