I watched The Grey with Liam Neeson with only one expectation: that Liam would nail it with his performance. I got a lot more than that. For a long time, probably since Star Wars Episode I (sorry, Jedi enthusiasts), Liam fell into my category of aging actors whose face alone weary me. Then I saw him in Gangs of New York and felt he might still have some merit. Then I saw Taken and realized the new action hero was born! And it’s an old Irish man?! Makes sense. The Irish can be down for the count and come back with a resilience that’s often super human. Yes, I love the Irish, especially Irish women. I love all Celts for they are fierce, passionate and unrelenting.
But back to Liam. Hollywood quickly caught on to the fact that this man had broken new ground for himself. Since Taken, Liam’s been consistently cast as the over-the-hill white man who you simply don’t want to mess with, because he will find you, he will cut you open and he will stop at nothing to achieve his aim. Who doesn’t love that?! In The Grey, Liam is literally thrown into the Sarlacc pit and the film is not about him finding trouble, but climbing out. Also, this time his mortal enemies are not conspiring humans, but a pack of fierce wolves killing all invaders, one by one. I don’t jump during scary movies. I wasn’t shocked as much as creeped out byParanormal Activity and The Last Exorcism, but this film had me literally jumping out of my seat on two occasions.
I absolutely feast on films that rely on visuals to tell a story and where most of the dialogue is not spoken, because things are being experienced that are not easily put into words. This film falls into that category. I also love Nature and cinema shots with scope where you get a visceral feel for the spaces the characters inhabit as if they had a life of their own. Kubrick first conveyed this to me in The Shining. Valhalla Rising achieved it as well, while James Cameron’s Avatar failed to do this, sadly. He missed the whole point of doing a film on such a grand scale. Lost sight of the sense of life a motion camera can give places and the non-living or non-human, as opposed to computer-generated visuals that shock your eyes with color till your nose bleeds. Meanwhile, in The Grey, as the film comes to a close, you realize there’s an important theme playing itself out here--one that’s intimate and full of spirituality. It begins with the recitation of four lines of poetry that encapsulate the theme:
"Once more into the fray.
Into the last good fight I'll ever know.
Live and die on this day.
Live and die on this day."
The film is about the struggle against evil that is inherent on this planet, even within Nature itself, as symbolized by the pack of blood-thirsty wolves. You ask yourself, why would animals go to such an extreme? They went beyond protecting their den. They hunted these men. You sense there's something twisted about them and the director maintains the sense of awe at how mysterious that truth is. We're used to human beings acting evil and degenerate; we can rationalize that. We can't rationalize when Nature turns against man, in this case through the wolves. It's not rabies. It's evil, pure and unadulterated, acting through those beings, human or not, who lend themselves to its control. Pretty creepy stuff. The last time I remember feeling that creeped out was when I read Tolkien's "The New Shadow." In any case, the film is telling you that you can cry out to God for help if it comforts you. In the end you have to find the strength within yourself to confront evil on its own turf and "live and die on this day."
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