The Grey

The Grey Information

The Grey is a 2012 American psychological thriller co-written, produced and directed by Joe Carnahan and starring Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, and Dermot Mulroney. It is based on the short story Ghost Walker by Ian MacKenzie Jeffers, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Carnahan.

The story follows a number of oil-men stranded in Alaska after a plane crash, who are forced to survive using little more than their wits, as a pack of grey wolves stalk them amidst mercilessly cold weather. The film received generally positive reviews.

Plot

John Ralph Ottway (Liam Neeson) works in Alaska killing wolves that threaten an oil drilling team. On his last day on the job, Ottway writes a letter to his wife Ana (Anne Openshaw) in which he explains his plans to commit suicide. While holding the barrel of a rifle in his mouth, Ottway hears the howl of a wolf and does not pull the trigger. Upon completing the job, the team and Ottway head home on a plane that crashes during a blizzard. Ottway then sees a vision of his wife urging him not to feel afraid, a motif that recurs throughout the film. When Ottway awakens he finds one of the team members, Lewenden (James Badge Dale), mortally wounded: Ottway calms him, letting him know that he is going to die, and then Lewenden dies peacefully.

Ottway sets the survivors to task collecting material for a fire. He sees a woman in apparent need of help, but discovers that what he thought were her cries actually were the noises of a grey wolf which is eating her, and he is attacked by it. He is rescued by the others and explains that they are most likely in the wolves' territory. After lighting a fire, the survivors take turns keeping watch. While urinating, Hernandez (Ben Bray) is killed by two wolves. The remaining survivors find his body in the morning and Ottway suggests they leave the crash site because there they are likely to get attacked. Diaz (Frank Grillo) questions Ottway's leadership and begins defying his orders. Before they leave, Ottway and the others remove the wallets from many of the bodies with the intention of returning them to surviving family members. Diaz finds an emergency wrist watch containing a wire antenna that he says should attract any nearby planes. Hendrick (Dallas Roberts) says a prayer and thanks God for allowing them to survive the crash and then they leave the site.

While hiking through the snow, Flannery (Joe Anderson) falls and is killed by three wolves. The remaining survivors continue on and set camp in the woods. While walking, one of the members notices a pack of wolves running towards them. The group runs for the trees and begins to light a fire to keep the wolves off. The tension between Ottway and Diaz comes to a head as the survivors create makeshift weaponry. Diaz threatens Ottway with his knife, but is disarmed by him. The survivors meet the alpha wolf, which sends an omega to test Diaz. However, the survivors are able to kill the wolf and eat it. Diaz cuts off its head and throws it back as a symbol of defiance. The others see this as an unwise move as one of them notes that besides humans, wolves are the only creatures known to take revenge.

The group stops to build a campfire at night and they start a conversation. Diaz tells the group how in his opinion the men who died are not in heaven and there is no god; Talget (Dermot Mulroney) states that he believes in God, while Ottway says that he too is an atheist, but that he wishes he could believe. Burke (Nonso Anozie) awakens and begins to hallucinate from hypoxia. He goes back to sleep in front of the campfire. The group bonds over personal stories and Ottway tells them about a poem that is hung above his father's desk, a poem that contributes to the film's major theme. He recites it: "Once more into the fray...
Into the last good fight I'll ever know.

Live and die on this day...
Live and die on this day..."

A blizzard approaches and the group tries to preserve the fire to prevent hypothermia. Ottway finds Burke's frozen lifeless body in the morning. Further in their travels, the survivors come across a high canyon wall within which, screened by trees, they are able to spot a river. Hendrick jumps to the trees, securing a line as a means of traverse. Diaz and Ottway make it across the line to join Hendrick, but Talget, who is afraid of heights, loses his glasses and is initially frozen with fear. He reluctantly continues across, but soon finds that his injured hand has begun bleeding and gets caught up in the makeshift rope. Talget struggles to untangle himself, but the line breaks and he crashes through the trees to the ground. Wounded, Talget sees a vision of his daughter as he is dragged away by the wolves. While attempting to save Talget, Diaz falls from the tree and injures his knee.

The three remaining survivors continue their trek and make it to the river, but an exhausted Diaz can make it no further, preferring to stay and die than go on. Diaz decides to rest, explaining to the others that his life back home is certain to be meaningless or worse, and that he feels he belongs nowhere else except in the desolate environment in which he's stuck. Thus he refuses Hendrick's ostensibly sensible offer to prepare a litter and to have Ottway and Hendrick trudge him along. He merely asks Ottway longingly if what Ottway said when Lewenden was dying was true (e.g., that a certain feeling of warmth comes over you as death arrives). They say their final goodbyes, with Ottway and Hendrick leaving Diaz behind at a particularly beautiful stretch of riverside. The viewpoint then shifts to Diaz all alone, as the distant crackling of branches caused by wolves is soon heard. Ottway and Hendrick continue on, but are soon beset by wolves again. Fleeing, Hendrick falls into the river and gets his foot jammed between underwater rocks so that his head cannot quite reach the surface. Ottway jumps into the river attempting save him, but Hendrick drowns. Freezing and alone, Ottway then curses God and asks for his help to no avail. Ottway continues on without his wet coat but he eventually starts developing hypothermia and hallucinates.

Ottway then drops to his knees, retrieves the wallets collected from the dead team members, and examines various photos contained therein of his deceased fellow passengers. He stacks the wallets on the snow in a cruciform shape. Ottway then gazes with great emotion on Diaz' driver's license photo and squeezes Diaz' wallet in a prayerful gesture. Then he immediately realizes that the pack of wolves has surrounded him, and Ottway realizes he's stumbled into the center of their den. He is quickly spotted by the alpha wolf, causing the other pack members to back off. Ottway then places his undelivered letter into his wallet and adds it to the stack. Ottway sees another vision of his wife, revealing that she told him not to be afraid while she was dying on a hospital bed. All the while resting on his knees, Ottway straps on an emergency wristwatch using the wire antenna as a garrote, tapes miniature alcohol bottles between his knuckles and breaks them thereby creating makeshift "claws" for himself on one hand, and tapes his knife to his other free hand. Having made these preparations, he patiently recites his father's poem and at the split-second moment as he begins to charge at the alpha, the screen goes black and credits roll.

In a brief post-credits scene, the back of Ottway's head is seen lying on top of a still-breathing wolf's stomach. It is unknown whether or not he survived, but it appears that the wolf breathes his dying breath, similar to the wolf shot by Ottway at camp earlier in the film.

Cast

Liam Neeson as John Ottway
Dermot Mulroney as Jerome Talget
Frank Grillo as John Diaz
Dallas Roberts as Pete Hendrick
Joe Anderson as Todd Flannery
Nonso Anozie as Jackson Burke
James Badge Dale as Luke Lewenden
Jacob Blair as Cimoski
Ben Bray as Hernandez
Anne Openshaw as Ottway's wife

Production

The Grey reunited director Joe Carnahan with producers Ridley Scott and Tony Scott (credited as executive producer) as well as actor Liam Neeson, who collaborated on the 2010 action film The A-Team. The film initially imagined a much-younger lead character and Bradley Cooper, who also worked with Carnahan on The A-Team, was cast in the lead role, but he was eventually replaced by Neeson. Filming began in January 2011 and ended in March. The film was shot in forty days. Though set in Alaska, the film was shot in Smithers, British Columbia, with several scenes being shot at the Smithers Regional Airport. Joe Carnahan disclosed, in a Q&A session following an early screening at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, that he had shot an alternative ending (that he'd never intended to use) showing Neeson battling the alpha wolf. It will be included in deleted cuts.

Release

The world premiere of The Grey took place on 11 January 2012, at the Regal Cinemas Theater in Los Angeles. The film was released nationwide on 27 January 2012.

Marketing

Promotion for The Grey in part targeted Christian groups by issuing a "film companion", which highlighted the spiritual value of the film. Marketing also partnered with The Weather Network to highlight the hazardous filming conditions. Open Road Films incorporated comments tweeted by movie critics to promote the film in the third trailer for The Grey. This was the first time tweets from and Twitter handles for professional critics had been used in a film trailer.

Music

The score for The Grey was released on CD 14 February 2012. A digital version available for download was released on 24 January 2012.

Reception

The film earned generally positive reviews from critics. As of 19 November 2012, The Grey holds a 79% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 183 reviews, stating: "The Grey is an exciting tale of survival, populated with fleshed-out characters and a surprising philosophical agenda." Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 out of 4 stars, and wrote that the unrelenting harshness of The Grey so affected him that he departed the screening of a different movie on the same day: "It was the first time I've ever walked out of a film because of the previous film. The way I was feeling in my gut, it just wouldn't have been fair to the next film. " The film also earned a place on A.O. Scott's list of the year's ten best films, and Slate film critic Dana Stevens included it her runners-up for the year's best movies.

Dissenters' reviews tend to focus on the film's abrupt ending and perceive the emotional and philosophical undertones as unnecessary. Siobhan Synnot of The Scotsman gave the film two stars, commenting that "On the down side, there's a lot of dull pretentious philosophizing about the heartlessness of nature and God. On the up side, you get to see a man punch a wolf in the face." Some reviewers and analysts have described the film as having an atheist theme, due to characters such as John Ottway (Liam Neeson) pleading for divine help but not getting any.

Controversy

On 19 January 2012, British Columbia's The Province featured an article about the movie's buying four wolf carcasses from a local trapper, two for props for the movie and two wolves for the cast to eat. This angered environmentalists and animal activists, who were already irate that the movie depicts wolves in a negative light, specifically at a time when grey wolves had recently been removed from the Endangered Species Act in many western American states. In response to the portrayal of wolves in the film, groups including PETA and WildEarth Guardians started drives to boycott the film. Open Road responded by placing a fact sheet about the grey wolf on the film's official website, with cooperation from the Sierra Club. Carnahan responded by downplaying the significance of the violent wolves portrayed in the film, instead highlighting the significance of man's internal struggle for survival.