movie thoughts: The Grey (2011)

[orangerful]

I had no idea what this movie was about. All I knew was that Liam Neeson looked like a total badass on the cover and, from what little I remembered of the trailers, was going to kick some ass.

Well...I was wrong and pleasantly surprised...in an upleasant way.

The Grey is a survival story, and not of one man, but of a whole plane full of men. They are men working up in Alaska drilling for crude oil. Neeson's character is in charge of keeping the wolves from attacking the workers. The movie starts with the men loading up on a plane to fly back to Anchorage for a bit of "shore leave" (or whatever the crude-oil-drilling equivalent of that would be). But the plane crashes and only 7 men survive. The movie is the story of their struggle to survive, a struggle compounded when Dire wolves find their crash site.

andy_wolverton had warned me this was an edge-of-your-seat kind of movie and boy was he right! I don't think I'd gasped so much during a movie in awhile!

Neeson leads a strong cast of bearded men (I have no idea if any of them are actors I know because I really could not recognize them under the facial hair and parkas). The editing is well done. They do not "talk down" to the audience and you find yourself glued to the screen because the director has no time to babysit you when it comes to the story. You have to keep up with these men as they wander the snow-covered plains. If you take your eyes off the screen for a moment, something could happen to one of them, you don't want to miss it! It is INTENSE!

It was fascinating to watch a movie that didn't depend on giant explosions, sexual tension, or expensive CGI to drive the story. It's a very visceral story, it's man vs. nature -- you don't need fancy effects to show that.

Def. worth picking up.