Wolfpuncher

Coming from the same director, star and studio as 2010's bland A-Team movie, my thoughts of a reteaming of Joe Carnahan, Liam Neeson and Twentieth Century Fox wasn't anything to get too excited about. However, Fox are on a roll after a critically strong show in 2012, Carnahan has regained the mojo he demonstrated in his gritty debut Narc and Neeson dials it up to 11 for their new film, The Grey, which may well rank among the very best come years end.

The Grey is basically a survival movie with the lucky half dozen oil workers who made it out of an aircraft crash in the barren Alaskan wilderness having to fight off the advances of a killer pack of native wolves. Like any survival story it's essentially a slasher film, with the characters getting killed off one by one as they attempt to fight off and evade the predators intent on tearing them limb from limb.
On this level it works very well indeed with the animals kept in the shadows with tight close ups, silhouettes, shadows and terrifying howls creating the tension rather than shoddy CGI creations this era has led us to expect. In fact the sound design is award winning standard capturing the soundscape of the harsh environment perfectly. In addition the gritty, rugged photography makes the film fantastically cinematic, much more so than it's inevitable small budget Vancouver shoot would normally show.

The cast are all strong, bickering amongst themselves in the best horror film tradtions to create even more suspense as starvation, injuries and severely low temperatures threaten to kill off the group as much as the hungry doggies. Neeson, not doing as much wolf punching as the trailer might suggest, is simply brilliant as the broken man who is best placed among the group to lead them to safety. This is the Neeson we want to see, not the vacant Muppet he was in The Phantom Menace.
Carnahan is also on top form delivering a movie that's very experimental with its sound design and editing to deliver something that's a touch more arty than initially anticipated.

But it's the strong spiritual subtext that runs through the story that really pushes this to the next level. The themes of how you deal with life and death recall The Shawshank Redemption, The Wrath Of Khan, Sucker Punch and Thelma & Louise and are present from the start right through to it's beautiful, idiot-bothering, ambiguous conclusion.

Atmospheric, tense and wonderfully haunting I can't wait to watch The Grey again.