The Grey: So much potential thrown to the wolves

Joe Carnahan's The Grey, starring Liam Neeson, is a film about despair. We see this from the early moments when Neeson's character, Ottway, contemplates suicide and places the barrel of the rifle he uses to protect pipeline employees into his mouth. Death permeates the movie to such a degree that the one emotion that carries any weight at all is the despair Ottway and others feel. Ottway's despair is different, however, for he has lost his wife and, seemingly, his will to go on. In spite of this, he fights tenaciously and resourcefully to survive and to keep others alive, and, at the very brink of death, overcomes his loss of hope.

Ottway and a small group of other pipeline employees survive a plane crash and find themselves hunted by a pack of malevolent wolves. Ironically, Ottway's job on the pipeline is to patrol work sites, rifle in hand, and protect employees from wolf attacks. It is in his determination to help the other men survive the ordeal that Ottway comes to terms with his own despair.

The biggest problem with The Grey is that it seems torn between being a monster flick and a serious drama exploring the conflicting emotions in Ottway that lead him from a moment of pure despair, when he might have abruptly ended his life, to being the leader of the small group of survivors. In one sense, the story is a metaphor for the way we are under constant attack in our lives by forces we cannot control, forces that cause us to lose hope and want to give up.

Ottway's wife appears frequently in the film in flashbacks or dream sequences, her final message to him not to be afraid.

This aspect of the film is well handled. It's a tender, heart-wrenching story. Ottway writes a note to her in which he states, "You left me and I can't get you back." We know from the scene with the rifle that this is a suicide note. We do not know until the end of the film why his wife left him and under what circumstances. It is Ottway's flashback to his last moments with her when she tells him, "Don't be afraid" that galvanizes him, leading Ottway to steel himself for the fight of his life.

It's just too bad this story is told through an entirely implausible battle against these very unwolflike wolves. The first hint we get that movie is going to veer off track comes in the opening minutes when Ottway shoots a wolf as it charges at a group of men working on the pipeline.

I grant you, I am no wolf expert, but I found myself doubting very seriously that any wolf would behave in that matter, openly attacking two or three human beings on its own.

It only gets worse from there.

After the plane crash, the survivors are stalked by the wolves, which, according to "wolf expert" Ottway, are protecting their territory from the human invaders. They will keep coming until all the men are dead because, it seems, they have ventured too close to the wolves' den. Ottway frequently spouts Wikipedia-like factoids about the territorial range of wolves in what is likely an attempt to justify to the audience what seems like very odd behavior.

The movie would have the audience believe that wolves are vicious and vengeful and willing to attack and kill , not for food, but to terrorize the interlopers trespassing on their territory.

It's a bit far fetched.

The alpha wolf even dares to stalk right into their camp to stare them down and intimidate them. This actually happens in the film. The wolf is huge and black and full of menace. It is not a real wolf.

And therein lies the problem: If this was intended to be the pure fantasy it became, then it should never have taken itself so seriously. We are expected to simply accept that real wolves do these things and that if your plane crashes in wolf territory, you will be stalked and intimidated and killed, so you better be prepared to fight for your survival.

I joked with my daughter that what the movie really needed was more Kate Beckinsale.

Though I said it in jest, I feel this is a legitimate criticism of the film. If you're going to use wolves as a metaphor to tell your story about despair, then do it honestly without the hyperbole, without the overblown fantasy. If all you want is to create a horrific situation to represent the despair, then go ahead and make this a horror film. Don't pretend it's realistic.

Ottway is bitten by a wolf shortly after the crash and jokes that he's going to become a wolfman. One gullible survivor asks if that really happens. Given how many implausible moments the movie expects the audience to swallow, I couldn't help thinking it would have been a far better werewolf flick than an attempt at serious drama.

The sadness Ottway experiences at losing his wife is very real, and Neeson is believable as the grieving husband. The scenes in which Ottway is depicted lying by her side are very poignant, and it is a truly sad moment when their last time together is revealed.

At the core of The Grey is a very powerful story. It's just too bad it had to be intertwined with such an implausible plot.