Movie: The Grey
Starring: Liam Neeson
Released: January 27, 2012
Hoot Rating: I don't give a Hoot. Now, you may notice that this is not on the Hoot scale. That is because it is special just for this movie. It was so awful that I had to come up with something lower than Hoot-less.
Summary sans Spoilers: So, basically, Liam Neeson and a bunch of other people in an Alaskan oil drilling team board a plane. The weather is bad and the plane crashes leaving them stranded where wolves begin to pick them off one by one. Liam Neeson takes on the role of the leader as they try to make it to safety. Oh, and also there is a post-credits scene. I hate when they do that. I missed it because I didn't know.
The Critical Eye (Spoiler Alert): In this case, this will be more of a rant than an educated analysis. Basically, all that happens in this is a plane crashes and there are only seven survivors. These survivors, most of them anyway, put their lives in Liam Neeson's hands and they are, each night, slowly picked off by wolves who are offended by their being there. Literally, the movie's plot (or lack of plot) works like this: They walk in the bitter cold snow, it gets dark, they camp, the wolves eat one of the guys, the others sleep. They walk a little more in the bitter cold snow, it gets dark, they camp, the wolves eat one of the guys, the others sleep. And so on. There really is not much there. Other reviews of this film I have read have said that it is a character driven story. Well, that's all fine and dandy. I love character driven movies and stories. I'm all about character. But this was not character driven. You don't really learn anything about any of the characters until the very end when Liam Neeson's character is opening the wallets of the dead men and looking through their personal photographs (they had been collecting the wallets as the men died, so that they could give them to their families if there was a survivor). Other than that part at the end, you don't learn anything about these men except for the fact that they do not want to be killed by the wolves. You don't even learn most of their first names. There is a bit of a focus on the main character, Ottway played by Liam Neeson, but they keep it so jumbled that you really just don't know what is going on. I mean *major spoiler alert* at the beginning of the movie he is writing a suicide note to his wife and is going to kill himself, but he sees a wolf and, rather than shooting himself, he shoots it. Then he spends some time feeling the wolf's side as the life slowly goes out of him. Throughout the film, Ottway keeps having visions of his wife and he has a strange understanding of death. Finally, when he is the only one left alive, he realizes he has traveled right into the wolf's den, there is one last vision of his wife that leads you to believe she is dead. Then he plans to fight the Alpha wolf as he is reciting his father's poem, which is not even all that deep. It is transparent. He stares the wolf down and the credits role. There is a post-credit scene, that I didn't see or know about, where it seems Ottway has defeated the Alpha wolf. But it is not clear.
