Today's Review: The Grey

Liam Neeson plays John Ottway, a guy whose job is to kill wolves who threaten a drilling team in Alaska. With the contract coming to an end, it's time for John and the guys to fly home, but unfortunately the plane crashes in the middle of nowhere and the few survivors find the tables turned on them as they are hunted by a menacing and unrelenting pack of wolves. Even with John's professional know how, the odds are stacked against the team as they fight to make it through the harsh landscape and keep ahead of the pack.

The Grey is a pretty unrelenting movie, which is made clear near the beginning as soon as John starts telling people they're going to die. There's the odd lull in the action where character development and campfire stories take place, but there's always the lurking presence of the wolves in the background and the harsh weather around. It's like a slasher movie where the killer is nature, the survivors being picked off in different and creative ways.

Obviously it's a lot better than your standard slasher movie though. For one it's got Liam Neeson being his normal bad ass self, and the supporting cast do a good job portraying boyish camaraderie to pants shitting fear. The locations are beautiful and there are some great shots captured throughout, especially the jump cuts used during the plane crash scenes at the beginning. The violence is quite visceral, but never over the top. But while the character development is definitely there, there's not much to set the group of survivors apart from each other, they just end up being wolf fodder at the end of it all. Still, The Grey is a good movie, a great survival tale that keep the suspense built up right to the very end.

My rating: 4/5