Suspenseful 'Grey' stalks, snarls and keeps filmgoers on edge
With his chilling survival tale "The Grey," Joe Carnahan had within his grasp the potential to create a realistic, classic de facto monster movie such as "Jaws," except set on a sea of ice instead of the ocean.
When "The Grey" works, it has us cringing in terror from what we don't see, but hear: the ominous howls in the darkness, reminding an injured group of Alaskan plane crash survivors that they are on Mother Nature's cruel turf and staying alive may not be an easy option.
Carnahan directs portions of "The Grey" like a grand master of suspense, lulling us again and again into a fitfully false sense of well-being before springing the trap on our easily misled senses.
Yet, "The Grey" trades in its sharp and realistic tone for just enough silly lapses of common sense and phony Hollywood moments to knock it out of classic contention.
This isn't "Jaws" after all. It's just "Open Water" with wolves instead of sharks.
Smartly recorded in documentarylike grainy footage by cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, "The Grey" stars Liam Neeson as Ottway, a loner hired by an oil company to thin the herds of large, aggressive wolves that stalk the Alaskan oil rigs.
We know instantly he's not a happy guy, for he wanders away from a rowdy party to be alone and stick the barrel of his bolt-action rifle in his mouth. But he can't pull the trigger, despite being profoundly depressed by a recent separation from his wife (Anne Openshaw plays her in a few thrifty flashbacks).
Ottway and several oil riggers are aboard a small jet in one of the film's showcase sequences, a horrific crash in which - like the plane crash in "Cast Away" - we only see it from the passengers' perspective; we never glimpse the outside of the jet.
Among the death and destruction, Ottway pulls himself together enough to help a small group of survivors build fires and stay warm.
He doesn't count on the incredibly vicious wolves that pick them off, one by one.
Being a wolf expert, Ottway explains to the rapidly diminishing group that they must have crashed near a wolf den, prompting the lupines to go into full defense mode.
Even when Ottway pushes the oil men to leave the area, the wolves, led by a monster of an alpha male, pursue them with a Captain Ahab-like obsession.
This marks the screenplay's best concept, that "The Grey" is the tale of two alpha males at war in the wilderness.
One night in the darkness, Ottway hears the sounds of a wolf challenging the alpha male, who quickly puts down the rebel animal.
Likewise, an ex-con named Diaz (Frank Grillo) challenges Ottway's leadership, and he also squelches the rebellion.
These sublime touches, as well as the supremely well-edited, you-are-there, point-of-view scenes of terror and mayhem, become undermined by Carnahan's and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers' slipshod screenplay that erodes the tale's credibility.
In an early crash scene, Ottway hears a woman moaning, and sees a wolf chewing on her.
After he and his fellow survivors chase the animal away, <I>nobody bothers to check on the moaning woman.
</I>In a harrowing scene later, the men escape the pack by shimmying along a makeshift rope connecting a sheer, high cliff to huge evergreen trees nearby. When the men get to the ground, guess what's waiting for them?
Yep, those clever wolves that apparently took the ski lift to the bottom of the sheer cliff.
To be fair, Carnahan has greatly improved his directing skills since 2006's nausea-inducing Quentin Tarantino rip-off "Smokin' Aces" and 2010's lame big-screen take on the TV series "A-Team."
Carnahan has fashioned "The Grey" into a horrific tale with some real bite to it.
<I>Special note:</I> Stick around after the closing credits. You'll thank me later.
“The Grey”
★ ★ ★
Starring: Liam Neeson, Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, Joe Anderson
Directed by: Joe Carnahan
Other: An Open Road release. Rated R for violence and language. 117 minutes