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EDITOR'S PICK
Rating: ***1/2
The world is inhabited by people who seem alive, but are really like zombies,
merely existing than living. Many, bogged down by the weight of their pain, want
to die.
Writer Ian Mackenzie Jeffers (of the short story "Ghost Walker" on
which the film is based and scriptwriter) and co-writer and director Joe
Carnahan put seven of these men in a barren desolate landscape, their brute
masculinity in conflict with nature and its beasts - wolves - to give us a film
that is a triumph of cinema.
After a plane crash strands them in Alaska, seven survivors led by Ottway (Liam
Neeson) try to find their way back in the snow, even as a pack of wolves hunt
them down, one after another.
"The Grey", at a very basic, crude level, has got all the elements of
a survivor, man-vs-nature flick: infighting men, ravenous animals, a near barren
landscape, nature-vs- human nature and a flickering between hope and despair for
both -- the people in the film and the audience.
Director Joe Carnahan is a man in command of his medium. Thus, while you are
wondering whether our protagonists will survive, rather how many and which of
them will survive, he delivers something entirely else.
For the true question is not whether these men survive. It is whether their
spirits do. The point is not as much about the survival of the body, as it is
about the soul.
Thus, instead of assuming the survival instinct of his protagonists, Carnahan
makes them question their very existence.
Out there in the wild, fighting for survival, the men are stripped down to their
bare essentials. Their souls and their pretences are laid bare. And hopefully,
so is the viewers`.
Depending upon how you look at it, the ambiguous ending makes for a perfect
finale to a beautiful film. The sound and the stunning cinematography by
director of photography Masanobu Takayanagi accentuate the atmosphere of the
film.
Liam Neeson, always a director`s actor, delivers a power-packed performance as a
man weighed down by the loss of a loved one. The other characters play their
part beautifully as well.
Watch this one if you are a lover of nature and of films that are more soulful
than mere survival films.