Freezing Into "The Grey"
If you like Liam Neeson, here's another movie to put up the wall for him: The Grey. I'm still wondering why he has been doing all these action-type movies, especially at the age of 60. That just goes to show you: older people can still kick a lot of ass.
The setting of the movie is in Alaska, where oil workers and a hunter are on a plane ride for the usual thing everybody wants: money. We start out the story with a bit of trying to figure out who this Ottaway (Neeson) is. He seems to be a quiet individual that is in deep thought, which is what will confuse most people if they watch this. Ottaway seems to keep having these flashbacks of his woman, which made it hard for me to see if the girl was alive or dead. I felt that the character seem to have lost his love, and that he is just roaming the earth to find a purpose in a poem that his father had an interest in. That's what made him to be the hunter that he is.
Now for the main part of the reason why the plot thickens in this movie, they don't really say where they are going to. It has the oil rig workers going to an area that's desolate and plenty of work, along with the hunter, which I'm not sure why they would need them. They were going to the same destination, which was a fate that's worse than most could ever think of. When he's on the plane he had one of the most annoying people sitting right next to him, but he's able to get him to sit somewhere else. As the plane ride goes along the guys are talking amongst one another as the hunter falls asleep. He seems to be flashing back to a happier time with his wife, but is soon jarred awake to the plane crashing, waking up in the snow.
This is when chaos is at its worse, when everyone in the plane crash is either dead, dying, or trying to figure out how they survived the wreck. Once they get through a pretty messed up scene they start trying to organize stuff the best they can with fire and supplies. The worst is yet to come: the damn wolves. Watching these wolves when they are on, they seem like they are super wolves. The way they moved and how big they looked seem to be a bit overdramatic, especially during the part where the guy takes a leak on his shift but gets mauled, as no one from the group hears him die. As the story goes on, the struggle happens between the oil workers and the hunter because all of them think for themselves. It always seems to get them killed in some way, especially by the wolves.
I feel that if you're in need of a movie that has action with great acting, along with a protagonist at his breaking point and fight his way out, then The Grey is the movie for you. However it's definitely not one to watch with your loved ones. I had one issue with the ending, as it was basically shown in the trailer (which I hate when that happen). That might have been the only thing to affect my rating of this film.
MOVIE: The Grey
RUN TIME: 117 minutes
GENRE: Action/Adventure/Drama/Thriller
FINAL GRADE: 8.4 (out of ten)