“You’re gonna die. That’s what’s happening.”
- Ottway
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
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 Grey was amazing, even though most of the people in the theater wouldn’t agree with me. Liam Neeson is as awesome as ever. “You’ve got 5 seconds before I start beating the fuck out of you and you’re going to swallow a lot of blood over a fucking wallet!” Something like that, still a bad ass. One thing I don’t understand is how people boo in a movie theater. Who the fuck is going to hear the boo? NOONE. Stop making yourself look like a small minded dipshit. If you want to know why they boo’d, it was all about the ending, disregarding the entire film they watched beforehand. The image above is probably the most viral image of the film. Neeson with broken liquor bottles taped to his hand, a knife in the other, ready to kick ass. If you reeeally have to know why they boo’d and want to avoid all the other major spoilers, scroll down and ONLY read the last 2 sentences of this post.
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
The Grey is a film about survival, obviously, but it’s also about how far you’re willing to go to stay alive, and if you even have anything to give you that will. In the beginning of the film we see John (Neeson) writing a letter to his wife (supposedly a divorce) explaining how he doesn’t know why he does what he does (a professional game huntsman that protects oil rigs from wolves and other wildlife), but he knows he belongs there, with them, “Men unfit for mankind.” By the time he gets on the plane to his next job, he is exhausted and only wants to sleep. That’s when all hell breaks loose, the plane suddenly malfunctions and half of it is ripped off. The next thing we see is John’s wife, staring at him under bedsheets before she is ripped away with snow. What follows is simple enough not to get too into detail, especially if you are reading this and you want to watch it yourself. The survivors band together, realize that they are in the territory of bloodthirsty wolves, and make a plan to get to the tree-line before they are all killed.
One by one the survivors are killed off, either by the wolves or by the elements, but these deaths aren’t shallow, we get to learn a little about each of them before their inevitable end. The greatest backstory is left for Neeson’s character, for throughout the film you get the impression his wife left him for another man, or over marital issues. Instead, in the final moments of the film we see her bright face once more, and again she says “Don’t be afraid.” The camera then pans out to show an IV drip. She has obviously passed on. This is why he writes early in the film “I know I can never get you back.”
At the very end we see that Neeson has wandered into the den of the wolves, the exact area they were trying to avoid. The alpha wolf shows himself and stands before Neeson’s character, making the other wolves back off. We all knew he was going to die anyway, why demean the value by showing him actually dying? It was implied. **LAST TWO SENTENCES** In the final moments Neeson frantically tapes broken liquor bottles and a knife to his hands and charges the alpha wolf. Cut to black, no big fight, no gore, something everyone was expecting; instead we get a much simpler ending that fits Neeson’s character (in my opinion anyway).
I give it a 3.5/5
