Visit “The Grey” official website.

I’ve been eyeing many a poster for Liam Neeson’s The Grey over the past few months here in Tinsel Town. For some reason, I just assumed it was an action flick about an aged man whose prime is way, way passed. The trailer, by the way, looked simply awful.

But I got invited to a free screening, and, as a film critic, I had to go. Boy, was I wrong: not only is it not an action flick, it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long, long time – this, despite the fact that some natural and environmental liberties have been taken to tell the story of the Big Bad Wolf.

The movie is about a group of oil company workers who toil for their livelihoods far north in the land of arctic tundra, polar bears, giant walruses, and vicious, ravenous wolves. The men we encounter in the story are not the average, run-of-the-mill Joe Blow: these are men who can only live on the fringes of society because they are programmed for extended periods of extreme physical suffering and isolation. And when they’re not on an oil rig crashing into glaciers, they’re drowning their sorrows (or perhaps dreams) in alcohol. The “bar” that they frequent is one where everyone knows not only your name, but the name of your internal devastation. Bottoms up!

A group of workers, including Ottway (Neeson) are on a plane flying out on leave when it crashes in The Middle of Nowhere. Most of the men perish soon thereafter, leaving just a scant seven who must find their way out of the planet’s Frozen Hell.

They hope and pray to be rescued, but the only beings that find them are wolves. Scary, starving wolves that are only too eager to pounce on the wandering men whose only line of defense is fire. Remember the scene in Beauty and the Beast when Belle flees the Beast’s castle in the middle of the night and is attacked by a gang of bloodthirsty wolves? The Grey paints an even harsher picture of nature’s least friendly canine; you know it isn’t a fair portrait (they’re just trying to survive, the same way the men are clinging to their lives) but you buy it for the sake of the movie.

The big story here is that Ottway was on the brink of suicide when the plane crashed – now he realizes for the first time how precious his life is. He has to fight every element – nature, beast, and even himself – to preserve what should have been dearest to him all along.

Will he survive? Will it matter if he does? It all depends on what he does after. He just has to get to the ‘after’ first.