It's an allegory of the randomness of fatality, and relying only on our best logic to survive this world. “Fate didn’t give a fuck. Dead is dead.” Harsh conditions require blunt reactions; to beat your enemy, you must meet him at its level. Some read The Grey as an anti-drilling metaphor: mess with Nature and you're going to have to pay a price (and it's the front-line troops who always offer up their lives). For every action, there's a reaction. It's simple. However, any "pro-environment" message one can glean from the movie's plot is dwarfed by its greater themes of man verses animal and other demons within him. This is a solid thriller, regardless of your politics. And, Mother Nature, naturally, is a force to be reckoned with.
[Image via The Movie Zones]
The camera pauses on evocative imagery between the tense action sequences. The high-contrasted, crisp photography offers some breathtaking imagery of the snow-drift planes of Northern British Columbia, reminiscent of Chris Nolan's Insomnia. The reserved Neeson give a personal performance. His wife of fifteen years Natasha Richardson (one of Vanessa Redgrave’s daughters) died in the Winter of 2009 in a freak and seemingly innocuous skiing accident, leaving behind two sons. Two years later, filming began on this ruminating film about a man mourning the loss of the love of his life. “Not a second goes by when I’m not thinking about you. You left me and I can’t get you back … I move like I imagine the damned do, cursed.” The Grey’s grand scope sometimes gets the best of it. There is clique campire talk about masculine stereotypes, God, etc, but the performances and Carnahan's pensive direction save the proceedings. The director could have stood to have been a tad more judicious with his use of flashback, as towards the end, he overindulges slightly into the maudlin. The score could easily be accused of not earning every last one of its tears. And the relentlessness of the wolves gets to be too unreal at times. But despite the heavy-handedness, it’s a moving film no less, if you’re willing to see the filmmakers through.
The Grey is the middle ground between darkness and light, as Ottway (Liam Neeson) fights to get through the loss of his wife (Anne Openshaw), rather than get sucked into an emotional vacuum he will never be able to return from. He narrates the first part, as we oscillate between different points in time not far from each other (maybe a day apart), as well as memories of his partner (which emerge through various points of the movie). We learn he works for a petroleum company in the Alaska. At a bar, he reminisces about his wife. Outside, the next day, he takes aim and kills a wolf. Later, he takes the same rifle and shoves it into his mouth. A wolf howls setting off a chorus from the pack and he chooses to live.
On a plane to his next job, Ottway holds a letter, as his coworkers board. A guy named Flannery (Joe Anderson) sits next to him and keeps popping off, referencing the Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man. Once the plane takes off, it begins experiencing turbulence, making the men more and more agitated. In a chilling shot, as the camera dollies backwards down the hull of the plane, we can see the breaths of the men. In a well-executed harrowing scene, the system begins to short circuit, there’s trouble with the engine, the plane tears apart, and crashes.
Ottway wakes up in the wide-open freezing snow-laden cold, hundreds of feet away from the crash site. He has had better luck than most and begins to attend to the passengers who survived and are in need of care. Flannery and Hernandez (Ben Bray) are both in shock. Lewenden (James Badge Dale) is losing a fatal amount of blood and Ottway talks him through dying in a tearful scene. After he passes, he takes a count of the seven who are alive. Taking the lead, he decides their #1 priority is building a fire. While they collect combustible items, one of the men, Diaz (Frank Grill) comments, “I got a book; it’s called We’re All Fucked. It’s a best-seller.” Later that night, while one of the more injured men is unattended by the fire, Ottway finds a wolf munching down on him. He’s attacked, and the other men appear and scare him away. They tend to his injuries. Ottway takes one of the survivors to task for pillaging the dead.
While the men chat around the fire, the wolves appear again in the dark, threatening. After they leave, the men fall asleep. Hernandez (Ben Bray) is attacked and killed by one of the wolves while going to the bathroom during his watch. The next morning, Ottway wakes up to find his mutilated body, with bloody wolf tracks trailing off from the corpse. Ottway makes the executive decision to leave the crash site and look for help. He also decides that they should collect the wallets of the dead to return to their respective families. One of the men, Hendrick (Dallas Roberts), says a few words for the departed before they venture off. Through the unforgiving wind and snow, the trek is slow going. Flannery falls back too far and gets attacked and killed by a small pack in the light of day. As it gets darker, the men become open targets and the wolves start in on them. They manage to build a fire and scare them off. Around the campfire, Ottway starts to prep the men on protecting themselves. The incredulous Diaz, because there has to be an antagonist within the men, pulls a knife on Ottway, but the more resourceful Irishman overpowers him. “Cut this shit out, you hear me.”
A black omega wolf shows up to test the men and break up the fight. He leaves, but it’s only the calm before the storm--another attack. After killing a wolf, says Ottway, “Let’s get a large branch, sharpen the end of it. Shove it up this thing’s ass. We’re going to cook the son of a bitch. Then, we’re going to eat it.” While they dine on dog meat, the wolves start howling. “Fuck with us and we’ll fuck with you. You hear that?!” shouts Diaz. “You’re not the animals. We’re the animals.” Diaz goes a little ape shit, carves the head off from the spit, and tosses it out towards the pack.
[Image via The Movie Zones]
The camera pauses on evocative imagery between the tense action sequences. The high-contrasted, crisp photography offers some breathtaking imagery of the snow-drift planes of Northern British Columbia, reminiscent of Chris Nolan's Insomnia. The reserved Neeson give a personal performance. His wife of fifteen years Natasha Richardson (one of Vanessa Redgrave’s daughters) died in the Winter of 2009 in a freak and seemingly innocuous skiing accident, leaving behind two sons. Two years later, filming began on this ruminating film about a man mourning the loss of the love of his life. “Not a second goes by when I’m not thinking about you. You left me and I can’t get you back … I move like I imagine the damned do, cursed.” The Grey’s grand scope sometimes gets the best of it. There is clique campire talk about masculine stereotypes, God, etc, but the performances and Carnahan's pensive direction save the proceedings. The director could have stood to have been a tad more judicious with his use of flashback, as towards the end, he overindulges slightly into the maudlin. The score could easily be accused of not earning every last one of its tears. And the relentlessness of the wolves gets to be too unreal at times. But despite the heavy-handedness, it’s a moving film no less, if you’re willing to see the filmmakers through.
Movie Spoiler Summary
The Grey is the middle ground between darkness and light, as Ottway (Liam Neeson) fights to get through the loss of his wife (Anne Openshaw), rather than get sucked into an emotional vacuum he will never be able to return from. He narrates the first part, as we oscillate between different points in time not far from each other (maybe a day apart), as well as memories of his partner (which emerge through various points of the movie). We learn he works for a petroleum company in the Alaska. At a bar, he reminisces about his wife. Outside, the next day, he takes aim and kills a wolf. Later, he takes the same rifle and shoves it into his mouth. A wolf howls setting off a chorus from the pack and he chooses to live.
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| Dermot Mulroney as Talget |
Hundreds of feet up, they locate a river below. Tied to a make-shift rope, Hendrick leaps across into a forest of trees, with the hope of being caught by a bed of branches. With not enough rope available, in a thrilling, but implausible moment, it snaps from the tree it’s tied to and Diaz catches it just before losing their way across. With the rope tied to both ends, one by one, the men travel across, first Diaz, then Ottway, and, finally, Talget (Dermot Mulroney), who has a grave fear of heights and loses his glasses in the process of climbing across. The rope breaks sending him cascading down to the ground where he is visited by a vision of his daughter, before it’s feeding time and he’s killed by the wolves.
After hiking a distance to the river, an injured and bereft Diaz decides that he is dead weight and prefers to give in to the elements. As they continue on, Hendrick asks Ottway about the night he almost committed suicide. The wolves come after them sending them into the river. A log stops Hendrick floating uncontrollably down the river, trapping him underneath the water. Ottway tries to save him, but he drowns. He prays to the sky, looks through all of the pictures from the wallets he collected from the deceased, as well as the letter he has been gazing at throughout the movie. The wolves approach him and he has one more flashback to his wife, who is on her deathbed. He begins to wrap his knuckles MacGyver style in small bottles, before crushing them into shards. He recites his father’s poem, and the camera blacks out as he begins his attack.
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