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Released by: Universal Studios
Released on: May 15, 2012.
Director: Joe Carnahan
Cast: Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts
Year: 2012
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The Movie:
Directed by co-written by Joe Carnahan, 2012's The Grey stars Liam Neeson as a man named Ottway who makes his living patrolling the borders of an oil refinery in Alaska and shooting dead the wolves that periodically show up and endanger the other workers. Ottway isn't with his wife anymore and he more or less hates what his life has become - surrounded by 'assholes' he's just about to kill himself when the movie begins. Before he can do that, one thing leads to another and he finds himself on a plane with a ragtag crew of hardened oil workers on their way to Anchorage before a massive storm sets in. The storm catches their plane before it reaches its destination and it goes down and while most of the passengers are dead on impact, Ottway and a few others (Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts) survive.
They take shelter in the fuselage and soon realize that there are wolves in the area - nasty ones that will kill them, and they do. Ottway, wise in the ways of the wolves he's made his career out of killing, decides the best thing for the group to do is to head out to the trees they see in the distance, hoping that if the wolves see them leaving their territory that they'll relent in their pursuit. That doesn't happen and soon enough the injured men find themselves in a war against the elements and some of the world's most efficient hunters.
While the supporting cast aren't really given much depth here and exist only to twist the plot around, Neeson's character goes through some interesting changes as this movie progresses to its conclusion. The film winds up being as much an allegory about one man's denial of his own aging as it is a movie about fighting with giant wolves, but Neeson handles the material well and brings to the role a certain sense of nobility. He's good in the part and he plays it well. The rest of the cast are fine but this is Neeson's show pretty much all the way and his performance makes this as watchable as it is.
Shot with enough style and grit to effectively 'put you in the action' so to speak, The Grey is quite violent and easily earns its R-rating. There's plenty of suspense throughout the film and the wolves make for some interesting antagonists (if they are the antagonists, that is) but it soon becomes obvious that there's more to this story than simply the survivors trying to buck the odds and make it back to civilization alive. The flashbacks to the scenes with Ottway's wife tell part of the story as does a post credits sequence that a lot of people probably missed in the theater, that last bit tying in to a fairly important part that occurs early on in the film and which winds up bringing it all full circle while still managing to leave things fairly open to interpretation. Some of the metaphors may be painfully obvious but that doesn't take away from the suspense, not surprisingly the film's best element.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Universal brings The Grey to Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition widescreen transfer in the movie's original aspect ratio of 2.40.1 with all its grit and grain intact. The movie looks great for the most part, the cinematography really shining here in high def and detail and texture both really impressing throughout. Color reproduction looks great, black levels are nice and strong and skin tones look lifelike and accurate. Shadow detail isn't always perfect and sometimes contrast looks to be blown out just a bit though you get the impression this later issue was done on purpose as it sort of suits the look of the rest of the movie. All in all though, The Grey looks just as good as you'd want a brand new Hollywood feature to look in high definition.
The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track, in English, is demo material. It sounds excellent. From the plane crash to the scenes where the wolves are surrounding our ragtag crew of survivors out in the woods, there's excellent use made of the surrounds throughout the film. Dialogue is crystal clear and properly balanced and the score sounds excellent. Bass is nice and strong and really helps hammer home some of the sound work here without overpowering the performers - it's pretty hard to imagine anyone complaining about the sound quality on this disc. English tracks are also provided in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, but to hear this one right you have to hear it via the lossless mix. Optional subtitles are offered up in English SDH, French and Spanish.
The main extra is a commentary track with director Joe Carnahan who is joined by his two editors, Roger Barton and Jason Hellmann. This track is a mixed bag. While they spend a fair bit of time talking about the nuts and bolts of the movie, they also tend to pat each other on the back fairly often, which gets a bit tired. Granted, they made a really good movie, but we don't necessarily want to know how much they like it, we want to know how they did it. When it stays on topic and gives us the information we want on what it was like shooting out in the middle of nowhere and how the scenes with the wolves were done, it's great. The rest of the time… not so much.
Aside from that, we also get just under twenty three minutes of deleted scenes, all presented in high definition. There are six scenes in total, some that take place out in the snowy wasteland and which add some character development here and there and some which fill in some of the back story with Ottway's deceased wife. It's hard to say if adding any of these back in would have helped the film much, likely they would have hurt the pacing but it's interesting to see them.
Aside from that, there are previews that play before the animated menus load for unrelated Universal properties, and the disc is PocketBlu and Blu-ray Live enabled. It's also D-Box Motion Code enabled and comes not just with the Blu-ray disc but with a DVD disc and digital copy as well.
The Final Word:
Though it's short on extras, Universal's Blu-ray release of The Grey is otherwise pretty gosh darned impressive. The transfer is great and the audio is even better while the movie itself is tense, exciting, suspenseful and well made. The ending will divide some to be sure, but Carnahan and company should be commended for taking some interesting chances with this film and delivering something considerably more interesting than the fairly generic survival story the trailers made this movie out to be.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
