A howling plot!

IT’S hard to stay entertained watching a film with just seven people in it, but when one of those people is Liam Neeson … well, that’s a different story.

I love a good survival movie that pits man against nature because it’s not far-fetched and could easily happen and it’s this sense of probability which makes The Grey as terrifying as it is engaging.

To set the scene John Ottway (Neeson) works with an oil drilling team in Alaska and makes his money by killing the local wolves that threaten them.

Ottway isn’t a happy guy, to put it mildly. He wonders to himself how he ended up in such a baron and desolate place surround by the ‘dregs of society’. When the last working day of the season comes around, he begins writing a farewell letter to his wife.

After he finishes he steps outside to commit suicide but when he hears the howl of a wolf, he changes his mind at the last minute.

 As he boards his flight home with the rest of the drilling crew there is a storm on the horizon and one of his fellow passengers begins to joke about the possibility of a crash … I would not want to be sat next to him on a plane!

As it happens the joker was right and the plane hits a pocket of turbulence and begins to plummet faster than Mel Gibson’s career.

Ottway awakens after the crash in the middle of a snow-strewn wasteland, surrounded by wreckage and mayhem.

As he searches for other survivors, he finds six people with varying degrees of injuries. He appoints himself leader of the group (pack leader, or alpha male if you will) and sets about making camp for the night.

Just when it seems like things couldn’t get worse for the motley crew, a pack of wolves descends on the site and all hell breaks lose as Ottway tries to save someone who is literally the dog’s dinner.

The crew begins to wonder why the wolves are attacking and since he’s the resident wolf expert, Ottway explains that the plane probably crashed in the wolves’ territory and humans are definitely unwelcome.

After further attacks, Ottway decides the group would be better off making the trek to a woodland area a few miles away as they would be less open to attack. However, he can’t be sure if he’s leading the group away from the wolves’ territory or further into the heart of it.
 
As if being in a plane crash then being hunted by a pack of wolves isn’t bad enough, the group also has to contend with battling fatigue, hunger and blizzards … definitely a way to separate the men from the boys.

Members of the group begin to question Ottway’s leadership and challenge him for dominance until they come across the alpha male (leader) of the wolf pack and then all bets are off.

There’s an interesting analogy about dominance and leadership, and Ottway is like the alpha male of his human pack. In nature there can only be one alpha and when two males are competing for dominance, only one can walk away victorious.

I have no doubt that certain animal activist groups will be appalled by this film and make claims that animals were injured during the filming. However, to put their mind at ease, I sat through the credits and it said that ‘no animals were harmed’.

The thing I like most about this movie is that it creates suspense quickly and releases it gradually. It would be easy to over do it and make this a fright-fest but thanks to some great pacing the film never drags towards its almost inevitable conclusion. 

The film isn’t simply an excuse for man-on-wolf action with buckets of gore. In all honestly the grizzly scenes are far and few between. In my opinion, The Grey is more about mortality and how people confront the inevitability of death.
Neeson does a fantastic job and I can genuinely believe him in this tough-guy role. In fact, he did such a good job playing the part in this movie I reckon he could have taken Chuck Norris in a fist fight!

Showing in Cineco and Seef II