One glance at the cover image for The Grey (2012), directed by Joe Carnahan, and you’ll have good
idea of the film’s storyline: It is going to be in brutally cold terrain, protagonist
Ottoway will likely persevere because he’s played by Liam Neeson, who’s remembered
for his tough as nails characters, and of course, the colors in film will
mostly be variations of grey. On these points, The Grey does deliver,
but unfortunately it fails to deliver much else.
Ottoway's on the brink of suicide before he falls into no
man’s land, Alaska with a small group of men from a plane crash. They
quickly discover they aren’t only facing extreme elements as there’s also a
pack of wolves that are trying to kill them off, one by one.
Luckily, Ottoway makes his living killing wolves. There’s no
heartwarming kinship between man and wolf here, sorry to say. It’s ten below,
it’s windy, there isn’t shelter or much food, and the wolves are lurking. While
all of this makes for a perilous scenario, the lack of character development makes it pretty easy
to tolerate all of the death that ensues.
Though Ottoway seems like he ought to have profound
thoughts, like McCandless in Into the
Wild or experience constant thrills on his trek through the frozen Alaskan
wilderness, it’s rather void of transcendental ideas or excitement, even though
Ottoway is fighting to stay alive. He does repeat lines from a poem that was
penned by the director, “Once more into the fray … Live and die on this day,”
which echo throughout the film from beginning to end like a moot point. As
noted, this fact is pretty clear from the cover image.
While it’s
evident Ottoway discovers an animalistic drive to fight for his life, which may
have been more interesting to watch had it felt like his character actually
changed, he’s portrayed like a grown-up Eagle Scout right off the bat. As the
other men die around him, one can’t help but think it’s because they were inept
in crucial outdoor knowledge, while our hero, Ottoway, possessed all skills
needed to survive freezing temperatures and killer wolves.
Aside from the slow and expected storyline, The Grey does have its moments. The
cinematography balances an ambiance that skillfully straddles harsh and
exquisite, and there’s a riveting scene toward the end, where the last men
alive are backed into the edge of a cliff and one free-jumps into trees to
create a line for the others to cross.
The Grey is a
subdued snow-scape of one man’s efforts to survive, but it’s not just any man,
it’s a man played by Liam Neeson, which we all know changes everything.
