Joe Carnahan’s latest film, THE GREY, is his best since NARC, a lonely, haunting ‘Man v.s. Nature’ epic that could best be summed up as JAMES DICKEY’S JAWS.
The tough, terse Ottway(a great Liam Neeson) works with an Alaska oil drilling team. He is there to cull wolves who try to eat the workers on the pipeline. The men he protects are the scum of the Earth, drifters, hardcases, ex-cons and lowlifes. Ottway, heartbroken, mad at God, has exiled himself here. Caught with several of them in a plane crash, he realizes he and the survivors are being stalked by a pack of grey wolves, who see their arrival as intruders impinging on their turf.
Carnahan has always been fascinated by a man pushed to the edge and here Neeson delivers. Can a man fight for his life when he doesn’t care if he lives or dies anyway?
Neeson notices the grey wolves are getting bolder, as they take one survivor at a time. They urinate all over the wreckage to show they claim it as their own, they peer over the cliff at them during daytime and even send members of the pack to attack. Neeson realizes the Alpha Male of the pack is one step ahead of them the entire time.
Those worried about what Tom Jankiewicz terms “The Dead Dog Effect”–that a movie like this suffers when the audience sees the fierce animal dead like a poor dog, which generates sympathy and mitigates fear of the creature, need not worry. Carnahan films the beasts like they are out of a fairytale or nightmare.
Like the wolf in Zack Snyder’s “300″, Carnahan makes them mythical, all glowing eyes and snarling jaws. There is little backstory. We realize Neeson’s pain over the death of his wife(a tragedy the actor suffered in real life as well), which makes him sympathetic–he starts to see the predicament he’s in as a metaphor for his entire life.
Anne Openshaw (also in Carnahan’s NARC) is moving in flashbacks as Ottway’s wife. We learn more about why Ottway is the way he is, and the last flashback is a sad surprise. Carnahan manages to reference Dickey, Jack London, LORD OF THE FLIES and even JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING. Dermot Mulroney is unrecognizable but quite good as one of the tough survivors. The wolves themselves desrve praise, because they are scary and effective onscreen. A scene where Neeson prays and then curses out God is shocking and powerful. All of this builds to his decision to go mano-a-mano with The Alpha Wolf. The director shoots Neeson so that he looks a little like a wolf himself. All tech credits are great.Greg Nicotero’s wolf FX are well done. A scene of the wolf literally biting a man’s hand is especially disturbing.
Stay til the end of the credits to see who wins the big finish. -Pat Jankiewicz
Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.
