It’s safe to say Liam Neeson is a certified badass ever since he starred in 2008’s ‘Taken’. Between that time and now, he’s starred in ‘Clash of the Titans’, ‘The A-Team’, and ‘Unknown’, all films where he’s basically looking cool while beating other people up. With ‘The Grey’, which reunites Neeson with his ‘A-Team’ director, Joe Carnahan, he meets his greatest challenge yet: man-killing wolves.

I said “man-killing” instead of “man-eating” because these wolves aren’t hungry and killing people for food, they’re out solely for the kill in to protect their territory. Liam Neeson’s character, Ottway, works for an oil drilling company as a marksman, someone who shoots dangerous animals that get too close to the workers. The group of men who work for this company are all social outcasts who have no other choice but to take on the dangerous and miserable task of drilling oil in Alaska.

When the team’s job is completed, they board a small plane back home. After an excruciating, heart-pounding plane crash sequence, only seven men are left alive, including Ottway. The group consists of several different types, including family men and ex-cons. Ottway quickly assumes the leadership role due to experience, especially with wolves. The surviving group find themselves stranded in the middle of wolf territory, and are required to do everything they can to fend off the wolfs while moving along through Alaska to find help.

As is the case with almost all survival movies, it’s hard not to think about what you’d in a situation like the one depicted in ‘The Grey’. The seven men’s efforts to survive the blistering cold, ferocious wolves, and starvation are terrifying, and at times even heartbreaking. As the men are killed off one by one, whether by wolves or by nature, it gets even more painful to watch the surviving men continue to survive. We learn of each men’s background and their reasons for living, which grants them more compassion from the audience. Ottway himself had thoughts of suicide at the beginning of film, but now in this unfortunate situation he must fight both mother nature and wolves to stay alive.

For a Liam Neeson film, ‘The Grey’ packs less action than you’d expect, but that honestly has no effect on the film at all. We hardly care at all that there’s no heavy action in the film, as the scenes of survival are more than enough to maintain interest. This is a film that’s more about the feeling of grief and bleakness, as well as the meaning of life and the will to survive. Religion comes into play by the end of the film, but never in the drowning, pushy kind of way. ‘The Grey’ makes you experience the pains and agony of the survivors, and by the end of it you’re left completely grief-stricken.

Three and a half out of four Kents.

Extra Notes:

The ending of ‘The Grey’ is open-ended (just like so many movies nowadays…). Whether or not it’s a good ending is up to you to decide, but if you want a little bit more there is a very, very, very short post-credit scene.
‘The Grey’ is planning on coming back to theatres in October during awards sweeps season, just in time for the Oscars. I’m not sure if the film is that good, but it’s pretty darn good.