Once upon a time there was a girl. She had made it through 22 years and thought she had things pretty sorted: a job, friends, the ability to play Wonderwall on guitar. She’d travelled a little, seen the sun rise over foreign beaches and set over misty mountains. She’d loved, lost, and eventually found something that felt like inner peace.
But, without even realising it, there was a void. No matter how full her life had seemed, it wasn’t – it couldn’t be – complete. Because until today, that girl had never seen Liam Neeson duct tape broken bottles to his fist as he prepared to beat the shit out of a wolf.
Oh man. First off, I admit that this film is not perfect. The wolves are clunky and unrealistic, verging into pantomime territory; the laws of physics are almost certainly broken; it does skim the edges of ridiculousness. Despite all that, The Grey still manages to be thoughtful, sombre and oh so badass.
The melancholy tone begins with the opening scene, in which John Ottway (Liam Neeson) narrates his suicide letter to his wife: “You left me, and I can’t get you back… I move like I imagine the damned do, cursed.” Patrolling the edges of an Alaskan oil well, Ottway stalks through the snow, a lone wolf tasked with hunting down the actual wolves which prowl the freezing tundra. That is, until his plane back to Anchorage crashes in a blizzard, leaving Ottway as de facto leader of a group of survivors. Battling to stay alive in the sub-zero conditions, the group of oil workers soon realise that they are being tracked by a real life wolf pack. The film traces their progress through the harsh Alaskan wilderness, as one by one they fall victim to that very worst predator: death, in all his guises.
There are rumours that this film is not just about Liam Neeson facing down wolves. Some people claim that it is all an existentialist metaphor about the brutality of life, our desire to cling to it and eventually the acceptance of inevitable death. Or something. Personally, I think that’s fairly irrelevant to your enjoyment of this film; more relevant is how much you enjoy Liam Neeson films in general and whether you know any facts about the behaviour of wolves (if so, you might start throwing things at the screen in disgust).
There is more to this film than just Neeson’s grizzled good looks, rough Irish accent, and a bunch of wolves though (yes, he’s older than my dad. Still would). I appreciated the relationship between the bleak yet somehow triumphant mood of the film and the beautifully muted colour palette and Alaskan scenery. It was also refreshing to see an American-made film that refused to abide by Hollywood tropes. One of my favourite scenes involves Ottway, in pure desperation and despair, screaming at the grey, unforgiving sky, asking god to finally show himself. My fingers were crossed hoping that writer and director Joe Carnahan wouldn’t give in to the desire for a happy ending and pull an unexpected helicopter out of the clouds. Thankfully, no deus ex machina was forthcoming; instead Ottway pauses for breath before grunting “fuck it, I’ll do it myself.”
The Grey is silly, although I have a feeling it was trying very hard to be serious. However, in no way does this detract from the pleasure of watching it; if anything, I enjoyed the ridiculousness, in the same way I enjoyed Neeson punching a man in the throat in Taken. I didn’t believe it would ever really happen, but it was still awesome to watch.
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