“The Grey” Movie Review

by Kevin Montes

Teams of oil riggers located in Alaska are flying back to camp from a job. The plane begins to fly through turbulence, and the wings begin to freeze up, ultimately ending in a plane crash. John Ottway (Liam Neeson) wakes up and finds out that the crash caused the death of most of the crew, but a few have survived. The crew consisted of Hendrick, Flannery, Diaz, Talget, Burke, and Leweden. The group soon discovers that they are being stalked by a pack of wolves, due to crash landing in their territory. And subsequently, the pack starts picking off the survivors one-by-one. As it progresses they start understanding that it’s the fight of the fittest.

After watching the trailer, I thought I was walking into something great, but I was wrong. The audience is provided with very few details of Liam Neeson’s character, but as the story unfolds we learn that his character brings a great deal of knowledge to the group. He starts to make sense out of the situation and attempts to get this group of people to safety. I felt his dialogue was somewhat emotionless, while at the same time managed to make everything he said seem semi-believable. The rest of the characters meshed very well together, despite some nonsensical dialogue I felt we could have done without.

As each scene progresses, the characters true colors begin to shine, and they realize that in order to survive this ordeal, they are going to have to work together.

Now on to the minor problems, and complaints that I thought could have been fixed. First of all I thought that the CGI and sound mixing somewhat went over board. The wolves almost looked unreal and bigger than usual. It may have been a technique to add more of a scare tactic towards the film. Who knows. The sound mixing was way too Gah! The wolves sounded like they were in some sort of a jungle. They sounded like they were menacing, but at the same time, too menacing. Before they were shown, I had a vision in my head that these wolves were the size of King Kong. The pacing also slowed down at times which sort of hurt the flow of the film, I felt. Oh well. All-in-all, this film was more artistic, and more indie than most films in the theater, which I did like.

The director of the film, Joe Carnahan knew how to work with Liam from the previous film they did together, The A-Team. The directing was my second favorite aspect of the film. Carnahan, with a camera and crew, filmed the characters out there in the wilderness making the scenes that much more surreal and believable. Carnahan has a great way of transitioning scenes, especially when Neeson falls asleep and suddenly wakes up next to his wife. If more time were spent on the visuals and dialogue, I feel this could have been a good contender for a few technical Academy Award trophies. And from what I hear, this film could possibly be re-released towards the end of the year in hopes to Neeson a nod for best actor, which (despite the movie’s flaws) I do feel he deserves again.

This film is enjoyable despite some pacing and technical issues. I mean it almost had me at a Full Price. But I’d give this a good Matinee.

Rating System:
Full Price: 4 Eric’s
Discount Price: 3 Eric’s
Free Movie Tuesday: 2 Eric’s
Rental: 1 Eric
Save Your (and Eric’s) Time AND Money: Nada