Survival flick The Grey relates a good story

John Ottway (Liam Neeson) is the kind of guy that you would want on the plane with you if it happened to crash in the middle of Alaska during a winter storm.

For seven oilfield workers, that’s exactly what happens. They had all just finished their assignments somewhere in the middle of the Arctic tundra and were trying to get back to the contiguous United States when fate intervened. The plane – destroyed. Most of the crew and passengers – dead. Ottway seems to be the only one with a level head and enough nature savvy to figure out a path back to safety.

Ottway is a trained killer. He works for the company as a security guard, walking around the fenceless drilling area with his sniper’s rifle and shooting the local wolves that threaten to attack any of the other workers. Even though Ottway describes them as “ex-cons, fugitives, drifters, assholes,” he is the tough guy with the right skills, and every one of the others knows it.

Apart from the plane crash, the greatest and most immediate threat to the survival of these eight lost souls is a pack of grey wolves, “man-eaters” as Ottway calls them. He knows how to kill them but his rifle is destroyed, leaving only the bullets. Nevertheless, he becomes the leader of the rag-tag group, and each of its members must overcome his own personal failings in order to make it.

That’s right. All of the survivors are men and The Grey is meant to be about as macho as it can muster. Neeson makes sense as the strong, silent type, the sniper with the heart of gold. There is a huge problem with him taking leadership though because he makes some pretty big leaps in logic. He isn’t a survivalist, just a rifleman. The wolves attack and kill members of the group one by one, as they first abandon the crash site and wander across the stark and unforgiving landscape into a nearby forest to get closer to civilization.

This story is mostly about man versus nature while it still tries to throw in elements of man versus man and man versus himself. We learn early on that Ottway is despondent and doesn’t have the will to live. The crash comes at just the right time to help him rediscover his purpose in life. The device is a bit trite but still effective. You could consider this a very basic lesson in nihilism, the philosophical argument that life has no intrinsic value. Ottway starts off not wanting to live, yet he fights for his life regardless.

Frankly, it’s a pretty good story overall so long as you, the viewer, have the ability to suspend disbelief. Wolves rarely attack people but it could happen. This group of guys could somehow make the trek of many miles without snowshoes or high-end winter gear and still have the energy to fight off the canine marauders. This movie would have made a bit more sense if we were learning some real survival skills along the way but there is no such benefit to be had.

This is Neeson’s movie. He has been making many strides over the last few years to be seen as an action star, albeit one who is still sensitive and intellectual enough to keep his appeal to an audience that doesn’t needlessly cry for blood or fight scenes. If that’s what you’re looking for then you should probably wait a few months till Neeson appears in Wrath of the Titans, or Battleship, or the sequel to Taken.

Compared to those, The Grey is more akin to Citizen Kane than other modern man versus nature movies like The Edge, The Reef, or Rogue. All of those are fine in their own right but at some point it must be recognized that they’re all the same movie, including this one.