THE GREY

Director Joe Carnahan re-teams with his The A-Team star Liam Neeson in this tale of men battling the elements; specifically battled are plane crashes, soul crushing misery, jerks, snow, heights, and wolves.  Neeson is a capable badass, delivering lines like "In about five seconds I'm gonna start beating the shit out of you" with steely resolve and appropriate menace, but the film ultimately fails him.  The direction is distracted/distracting, the threats are inconsistent and occasionally outright goofy, and before long I was hoping they would start eating each other because the damn wolves weren't doing it fast enough.

The plot has admirable focus.  It doesn't take long for the plane to crash, and we never cut away from our group of survivors.  Some people have visions of their loved ones, but those aren't developed flashbacks, just fleeting glimpses.  Speaking of 'fleeting glimpses', that's all you get when something important happens, because although Ridley Scott (Alien, Bladerunner, Gladiator, other classics) is listed as a producer on this film, his brother Tony Scott (The Fan, Domino, Unstoppable, other dreck) is listed as Executive Producer, so the direction of the film  is generally flailing and spastic.

Surprisingly, my biggest problem with the film was it's biggest marketing point: the Wolves.  They are mostly CGI creatures that never quite seem to mesh with the environment.  They just don't really look like they're interacting with the snow in the air or the snow on the ground.  Fur or hair is notoriously difficult for computer animation, and this film is an example why.  It looks weird.  Puffy.  Messy.  Wolves are sleek, but here they look like they just got out of the drier. 

These wolves are also loud as shit.  The crunching of branches is usually heard before they appear.  A wolf is a dog, so it's low to the ground.  How are they crunching branches?  Are they stepping on the wet, hard, frozen ones on the ground or are they smashing through the snow-blanketed ones still attached to the trees?  Why would they crack through any branch that put up resistance when they could just move around it?  I'm no Wolfologist, but I don't think that wolves crunch branches like fucking bigfoot or sasquatch lumbering through the woods or some other such nonsense. 

Besides the wolves, the men deal with myriad dangers.  They must contened with each other, having a few pointless shouting matches early on.  They must contend with the cold and the altitude, which causes an undignified and forgettable death for one charcter.  They also must tangle with a pretty ridiculous CGI cliff face.  Their plan is more ridiculous.  One guy will jump across the chasm carrying a rope and when he lands in a tree on the other side, he will tie that rope to a tree so the other men can climb across.  So the chasm is jumping distance?  The whole cliff sequence is designed around offing one of the characters, but the film makes it so painfully obvious who will be dying, so there isn't really any suspense to the scene.  To the scene that involves climbing over a CGI chasm on a rope made of clothes.

Mmmmmm....  Character actors.......

~ Pseudo-SPOILER: The trailer for the film contains the ending.  This is a strange practice.  I remember they did this with Piranha 3D.  I guess the marketing department assumes that you won't know/care until after you've seen the movie and by that point they have your money so they don't care.

~ Every time somebody dies, the survivors collect his wallet so they can return it to his family.  'Hey your husband's dead, here's his AAA card and some sandwich coupons.'

~ There is an ambiguous bonus scene after the credits.

~ Dermot Mulroney, almost unrecognizable with snow covered clothing, a baseball cap, greying temples, facial hair, and glasses.  Specifically, Chekhov's Glasses.