REVIEW: ‘The Grey’ is an intense survival drama

Joe Carnahan has got his groove back. After giving us the exquisite Narc, a crime thriller starring Ray Liotta and Jason Patric, the director slipped a bit with big Hollywood fare, including Smokin’ Aces and The A-Team.

His latest movie is The Grey, an unrelenting look at a group of men braving the elements and a ravenous pack of timber wolves in the middle of Alaska. The film is one of the most intense moviegoing experiences ever to hit the big screen; it earns its R rating with unexpected violence and a palpable sense of fear.

Step aside Sarah Palin. This is the new image of Alaska: unforgiving, terrifying, cold and harsh.

Liam Neeson plays John Ottway, a troubled man with a mysterious past. He works at an oil drilling facility, helping pick off the nasty wolves in the area with his trusty rifle. If they get too close to the workers, he trains his eye on the beasts and takes them down with one shot.

His life, we come to know early on, is a depressing one. He has flashbacks of a woman who left him, and with a deadbeat job in the middle of nowhere, his future prospects look dull. He figures the best way out is to go the way of the wolves, but something stops him from committing suicide, something he can’t quite explain.

With their tenure complete, the workers at the oil drilling camp board a plane headed for Anchorage. Like fishermen returned from the ocean, they have thoughts of lovers and better food waiting for them on the other side.

But this is a Joe Carnahan movie, so it doesn’t turn out to be a peaceful flight. The plane hits some turbulence and then eventually breaks apart, falling through a blizzard to the white nothingness below. Ottway wakes up among the carnage with a newfound enthusiasm to live.

After assembling the crew and building a fire in the hull of the broken plane, these unlikely survivors begin their improbable quest to survive. Their two main problems are the cold, which causes their grizzled beards to freeze, and a pack of nearby timber wolves.

The Grey doesn’t pull any punches in its filmmaking. I was half-expecting a mash-up of The Edge, a great wilderness thriller starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, and ABC’s Lost. But what I found was much more fierce. From the plane crash, which is a hellish experience to sit through, all the way to the wolf attacks, The Grey is an action-packed adventure where all of the action is real, savage and, at times, graphic. In many ways, the movie plays out like a horror film, with the wolves taking the role of the slasher and the survivors becoming the victims who are picked off one by one.

Carnahan, who wrote the script with Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, has an uncanny way of bringing this story to life. His lens go in and out of focus, hinting at the pending doom that will soon befall the characters. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi is able to capture the beautiful terrain with a unique, almost fuzzy atmosphere. Many of the scenes are grainy with the whipping snow that falls from the sky. It’s only in the quieter sequences around the campfire that we are allowed to take a breath and see clearly.

Look for the details in the filmmaking as well. Sometimes you can’t see the wolves, but you can tell they’re nearby when their breath fills the air. Watch how the blood of a victim fills up a snowy footprint from one of the villainous beasts.

Carnahan also uses sound to instill fear in the audience. He cuts from somber moments of respite to engaging sequences with loud gnashing of teeth and blood-curtling screaming.

Throughout the story, Carnahan and Jeffers add in a few flashbacks and we learn why these survivors are even trying to survive. It turns out these bullish oil workers are real men with real families. They hide their emotions beneath hard exteriors, but Alaska breaks them emotionally and physically.

After Taken and Unknown, Neeson has become the bona fide demigod of movie thrillers. The Grey suits him well, because he’s able to pull off the Ottway character with a believability that doesn’t come to every actor. If I were stuck in the expanse of the frozen tundra, Neeson would be on my short list for survivalist leaders.

But still, no matter the skills of these assembled men (portrayed by Dallas Roberts, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney and Nonso Anozie, among others), the wolves have the upper hand. It’s their turf. It’s their howls in the night. It’s their decision whether these survivors will make it out alive.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• The Grey

• 2012

• Directed by Joe Carnahan

• Written by Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers; based on the short story by Jeffers

• Starring Liam Neeson, Dallas Roberts, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney and Nonso Anozie

• Running time: 117 minutes

• Rated R for violence/disturbing content including bloody images, and for pervasive language

• Rating: