The Grey: A shit movie for fuckheads.

I don’t want to bias anybody, here but- What? Title of this one is already hugely biased? Awesome, okay. That’s a time saver.
So, “The Grey.” If you like it, you’re ugly and smell of piss.

…Fine. Look, I don’t generally review films. The absolute stone-cold last thing the internet needs is another asshole spouting off about movies he’s seen, but lately, Joe Carnahan’s “The Grey” has become a minor obsession of mine.
Briefly, for those who missed the trailers, Liam Neeson’s plane crashes in Alaska and he and the other survivors start getting hunted by wolves, and have to escape.
In case you’re a little slow on the uptake, I didn’t like the movie much. That’s okay; there are plenty of movies I don’t like. It wasn’t anywhere near the worst film I’ve ever seen (stand up, “American Ninja”) and I didn’t utterly hate it the way I hate needles or the Chris Moyles show. I just didn’t think it was worth seeing.
What’s bothering me, however, isn’t that I didn’t like it. What’s bothering me is how much other people liked it. How rampantly, desperately, screamingly in love with this movie they are, to the point where, to date, three projectionists have been trampled to death as “The Grey” fans barrelled over them on their way to try to have sex with the raw celluloid that comprises this epic masterpiece. [Edit: This isn’t true.]

Not only do some people really, really love this film, they love it in a uniquely irritating, smug way. The more I saw glowing reviews of “The Grey”, the more I started wondering if I’d missed something, so I started looking at reviews. Professional ones, not just what some asshole on the internet thinks.
Amazingly, every time I found a review that tallied with my own impression of the movie, the comments section was littered with angry fans saying that the reviewer “didn’t get it” and, usually, that they shouldn’t be employed as a movie reviewer in the first place. Ignoring the meta-review quality of reviewing a reviewer, it takes a special type of dickhead to say “I, who do not get paid to comment on movies, understood this movie better than you, and do not think you are qualified to do your job because you disagree with me.” People who demonstrably couldn’t work as film reviewers are calling for the sacking of professionals based on this shitpile of a film? What’s wrong with people?! Did this movie really have that much of an impact on the dreary lives of uppity wankers? Are the glowing reviews and angry comments coming from people who’ve only ever seen one film?! Did I see a different cut of “The Grey” to the rest of the planet?!
Like I say, it’s becoming a minor obsession. I just don’t get how anyone can love this movie so much. Don’t worry, I’m not going to sit here and give you my blow-by-blow objections to the film (it doesn’t make any sense, it’s boring, the ending is shit), but do worry: I’m going to give you my blow-by-blow objections to why people seem to think it’s great.

1: “The characters are compelling and well drawn.”
No, they’re not. A lot of people have commented on how subtle the character development is. There seems to be some confusion, therefore, on the difference between “subtle” and “not there at all.” Based on this, I’m going to work bollock naked today and hoping I can just call it a “subtle” outfit. The characters in this movie have a few conversations about their normal lives (ie: when they’re not lost in the woods being eaten by wolves) in the same way that characters in old war movies talk about “a girl back home” that they’re going to marry. It’s been done, it all feels by-the-numbers, and nobody does anything interesting. Example: The guy with tattoos is a hard case and kind of an asshole, the guy with glasses is timid, and so on.

2. “It’s really hardcore and violent.”
I think somewhere around the twenty-third “Saw” sequel, movie violence as a concept kinda jumped the shark. In the era of human centipedes, you really have to go a long way to shock viewers. Or maybe just a long way to shock me, I don’t know. The point is, a lot of people have commented on how brutal and bloody the wolf attacks are.
Except that they’re neither. There were far more graphic wolf attacks in “An American Werewolf in London,” a movie that was a) made thirty years ago and b) actually entertaining.

3. “You just don’t get it!”
I’m not going to have any ego on this one: I went to see “The Grey” because I thought Liam Neeson punching a wolf to death would be fucking awesome. I didn’t think it would be smart or meaningful, but Evel Kinevel wasn’t smart or meaningful either and he still drew a crowd, so let’s not judge.
In reality, however, “The Grey” aims to be a deep, artistic movie and doesn’t contain any wolf-punching. And I’m fine with that. I really am. I don’t mind being surprised when something has more depth than I expected. “Unforgiven” is one of my favourite films, and on the surface that’s just about Clint Eastwood shooting people and riding a horse. The fact that “The Grey” aspired to art wasn’t lost on me, I just thought it failed and sucked. According to fans, however, anybody who didn’t like this movie just isn’t intellectual enough to get it.
They also use this argument to excuse any of the many, many instances where a bunch of stupid shit happens. It doesn’t need to be logical, because it’s art. Taking that as our mantra, I propose a re-jigged ending where Liam Neeson escapes on a multicoloured Pegasus whilst playing the banjo. And if that doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s because I’m just so, so much deeper than you are.

4. “It’s all one big, mind-blowing metaphor!”
Fans of “The Grey” make a big deal out of the fact that the whole film is about death; the wolves are meant to be an incarnation of fate and the whole movie is about the struggle to survive in the face of inevitable mortality.
You know what else was about the struggle to succeed or survive when all seems futile?
Fucking everything.
Seriously,“Die Hard”, “Bambi”, “Rocky IV”, “Jurassic Park”, “Henry V”, “Aliens”, that episode of “Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em” where Frank Spencer roller skates across a busy traffic intersection, “Spartacus”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, “The Thing”, “Debbie Does Dallas”… They’re all about the human spirit’s struggle to endure in the face of overwhelming odds.
Fans will say that “The Grey” is different because it’s more about accepting death, but the only way that can seem interesting to me is if you’ve never considered your own mortality before. Everyone dies in “The Grey”, and it’s supposed to be about facing death on your own terms, but even that seems trite and tacky to me. Death doesn’t let you have “your own terms.” If you’re trying to make a realistic movie about the inevitability of death, you might as well spend two hours filming an office worker and then have him get hit by a bus, not have Liam Neeson reciting shit poetry and fighting a wolf with a bottle. I know I’m going to die; I’m sure you do as well. There’s no sense in navel-gazing, even less so in doing it through the medium of boring movies.

5. “Liam Neeson is awesome.”
I’ve got nothing against Liam Neeson, but his character in this movie was a fucking idiot.
At the start of the film, Neeson’s character Ottway is suicidally depressed. This isn’t hyperbole, he’s actually seen sticking a gun in his mouth and considering pulling the trigger.
As soon as the plane has crashed and the wolves show up, he advocates moving to the woods so the survivors can better defend themselves. Ottway apparently thinks that wolves can’t hunt you in a forest. For future reference, that’s sharks. Sharks aren’t good in a forest, wolves tend to be alright.
Anybody who knows anything at all about… well, anything at all, should already be aware that the golden rule in these situations is never to leave the crash site. A crashed plane is easy to find and would give you enough makeshift weapons to fend off attack. I know that it wouldn’t be very entertaining to just have a bunch of people sat in a plane fuselage throwing suitcases at wolves*, but this movie wasn’t very entertaining anyway, so they might as well have made it realistic.
I’m also pretty sure nobody would have followed Ottway into the forest had he admitted that he was thinking about killing himself anyway. It’s one of those situations where full disclosure is important. If an openly suicidal man says “I’m just off to those woods in the distance, anyone want to come with me?” you can normally predict a chorus of “Fuck, no!” as a response. As it is, everyone tags along with this bell-end and ends up either getting eaten or otherwise fatally maimed.


I could go on and on (I’m pretty sure I have) but there’s little point. Fans of this movie think it’s bulletproof. Any criticism, even from professional critics, is met with abuse and accusations of ignorance or stupidity.
Ultimately, however, in the same way that one can judge a society by it's prisoners, so too can you judge a movie by it's fans. So I'm glad I didn't like "The Grey", because it means I'd have to be a prick.


*Actually, that sounds like a fucking brilliant film...