Over the years there have been many wilderness survival movies, loads of Liam Neeson action flicks, and a fair few depictions of hungry wolves craving human flesh. Joe Carnahan’s frosty 2011 action-thriller The Grey ticks all three boxes, and then some – it not only stars the grizzled Irishman, but has him wrestling ravenous canines. After being bitten during one moment of man-on-wolf action (oh yes, there are more!), Neeson’s straight-talkin’ protagonist John Ottway jokes: “Maybe I’ll turn into a wolf man now.”
But it isn’t that kind of film. Having said that, one of the amazing things about The Grey – Neeson’s best action movie by a wide margin – is its blurring of the line between high and low art. This allowed it to be accurately marketed as a gnarly genre picture (Neeson! Wolves! Snow! Survival!) and then, once in the door, audiences expecting little more than an interspecies punch-on found themselves grappling with, and potentially sniffling through, a deep exploration of masculinity. The Grey contains some extraordinarily moving sequences that give me shivers just thinking about them.
