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What starts as a tense and moody survival thriller fairly quickly becomes tedious, forced and far-fetched as a septet of men is preyed upon by a wolf pack in the Alaska wilderness.
Wolves are much maligned in literature and films. The Grey (* * stars out of four, R, opens Friday) takes the notion of their vicious natures to new extremes as dozens of hulking, bright-eyed beasts attack a ragtag assortment of plane-crash survivors with startling ferocity. When they're not ripping people to shreds — as seen up close and personal through an annoyingly shaky camera — they're lurking ominously nearby, howling and growling.
Liam Neeson stars as Ottway, a melancholy loner working among oil-rig roughnecks. Apparently, it's his job to keep the work site safe from animal attacks. When he's not shooting the furry denizens, he's obsessing over a letter he wrote to a woman he loved and lost. He spends a good portion of the movie rereading that letter. He has recurring dreams about his beloved lying in gauzy sheets, and he often recites the lines of a trite poem and consistently reaffirms his lack of religious faith.
Fresh moves are clearly not this guy's thing.
Subtlety is not a trait preferred by writer-director Joe Carnahan (The A Team), either. Early on, Neeson's Ottway sticks a shotgun in his mouth. Why he doesn't pull the trigger is left unexplained.
Next, he boards a small plane bound for Anchorage. Shortly after takeoff, turbulence rocks the plane and it crashes spectacularly in what looks like Arctic tundra. Bodies and plane parts are mangled and scattered across the icy landscape. Ottway takes charge, rounding up the half-dozen survivors and calming a dying man.
This all seems out of character for a guy who a few scenes earlier had seemingly lost the will to live. But he's still no match for the menacing wolves.
Suspense devolves into a rote tale of man vs. beast. The survivors don't fully capture our sympathies because no one is given much dimension. Verbal nastiness erupts occasionally between the humans, but most of their time is spent trudging through snowdrifts and getting into bloody tussles with wolves.
In a climactic scene, the wolf pack inexplicably stands patiently, waiting for Ottway to get ready, arm himself and take a few moments to recite a snippet of a hackneyed poem before they attack. It's as if they were instructed on the gentlemanly art of battle.
In every other scene, the wolves come off as more brutal than bears, sharks and anacondas combined. With its reliance on jolts, sudden movements and thunderous sounds, The Grey is more startling than frightening.
This couldn't be more precise!
