Liam Neeson’s intensity drives The Grey [MOVIE REVIEW]
Liam Neeson stars in the action thriller, The Grey, opening Friday. Photo by Kimberly French
“The Grey” stars Liam Neeson as Ottaway, a cast-out like so many others living and working in an oil field somewhere in the outer reaches at the end of the world in Alaska. Ottaway has nowhere to go, so it’s fitting he ended up with so many others who’ve used up all their free passes. Leaving the field for any one of a number of reasons and for no reason in particular, he boards a plane filled with rowdy workers bound for Anchorage far to the south and to what substitutes for civilization. But something goes wrong and the plane drops from the sky into the wilderness in the middle of the freezing nowhere. Carnage everywhere, burning debris, shards of metal and only seven survivors. No one, Ottaway assures the others, will come looking for them and their survival is up to them, a survival that soon becomes even more unlikely when they are beset upon by wolves, big aggressive, territorial wolves.
This is man against nature at its most primal; they must fight not just the elements but also the predators. Ottaway, whose job at the oil field was to protect the area from the voracious wolves, is intimately acquainted with their habits and struggles to make the other men understand the dangers and the precautions. Two of their group are immediately lost to the pack and pressure increases on Ottaway to lead the reluctant and defiant five survivors out of the wreckage and into the woods where, he thinks, they will be safer.
Although “The Dirty Dozen,” a classic World War II film about a ragtag group of misfits assigned an impossible task to redeem themselves, comes to mind, this ragtag group is not interested in redemption, although the odds may be stacked higher against them. In the battle between “fight or flight,” none of them would choose fight outside of a barroom, at least not voluntarily.
Directed by Joe Carnahan and written by Carnahan and Ian MacKenzie Jeffers, “The Grey” is based on a short story by Jeffers. Carnahan has created a tense, terrifying and ironically claustrophobic atmosphere. Spectacularly filmed in British Columbia by Masanobu Takayanagi, the frigidity is palpable, to the extent that it is almost impossible not to feel the chill or see your own breath. The juxtaposition of beautiful, pristine wilderness and true terror is frightening and disorienting. There are adrenalized moments when you will jump out of your seat from fear. Carnahan unsentimentally reminds us that in nature humans are far down on the food chain ladder, although his use of oversized drooling animatronic wolves might be a bit of overkill.
Liam Neeson can always be depended upon to give a good performance, regardless of the material, but here he truly excels. His lost soul, intent on surviving a devastating accident when he is ill equipped to survive life in general is masterful. So much of the film focuses on him and his snow-burnt, ice-encrusted face, speechless but not emotionless; it is his ability to deliver all the depth of feeling that drives this film. Perhaps it is Neeson’s intensity and ability to communicate wordlessly that underscores the deficits in some of the other actors. They are all good, to one degree or another, but in fairness, with the exception of Ottaway, none of the other characters are as well written. Frank Grillo is a standout, despite the cliché-ridden dialogue that propels his stereotypic tough guy. Dermot Mulroney is fine, as are Nonso Anozie and Dallas Roberts, but unlike Neeson, their death march through the snow and ice occasionally feels like a winter backpacking trip in the Rockies. Whenever the philosophical meaning of life or the existence of God is broached, the film comes to a screeching halt, but luckily it’s only a short walk in the woods and the Robert Frost moment passes.
In a poem written long ago by Ottoway’s father, (something of a paean to the speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V – “Once more into the breach”), and echoing a theme throughout the film, Ottoway, at various junctures, recites — “Once more into the fray, into the last good fight I’ll ever know, to live and die on this day.” The journey to that day is engrossing and deeply experienced.
Opening January 27 at ArcLight Beach Cities, and AMC’s South Bay Galleria 16, Del Amo 18 and Rolling Hills 20.
Neely also writes a blog about writers in television and film.