One of the few films that will be remembered in future decades in what has been a especially weak year. "The Grey" is not for the faint of heart or those looking for cheap thrills - but it is an unusually brave and beautiful exposition of an unpopular and depressing philosophical view of life...
It was about Ottway finding the urge to fight for his life, and stay in the fight. Through an unlikely experience with strangers stranded in the wilderness with him and a pack of wolves, Ottway found his way back. He rehabbed his soul. That was the onus of The Grey, not a thankless wolf fight.
The framework could be generic with another male antihero filling out the plot, but Clarkson brings an unpredictable menace and corrosive glee to her female protagonist. Content collapsed.
Why The Grey is a Forgotten Masterpiece (Film Analysis)
What is the message in The Grey?
Ottway's perseverance in the face of adversity is rooted in his father's poem, which urges him to continue fighting, emphasizing the idea that a life without purpose is a wasted death. The ending of The Grey prompts viewers to question how they choose to react to life's battles.
Only eight men survive, and luckily for the film's bottom line, Neeson is one of them. Boy, does he know how to survive. As it turns out, though, his biggest problem is not the cold or lack of food.
“It's fictional. That kind of movie is completely designed for thrill and does not reflect reality,” says Kim Delfino, California program director at Defenders of Wildlife, whose group has taken a keen interest in OR-7. “It's highly, highly unusual for wolves to ever attack people.”
As the alpha and Ottway charge at one another, the screen cuts to black. In the post-credits scene, Ottway and the alpha wolf lie dying together following their battle.
There is not much wolf-killing, or even wolf-punching! Instead, Neeson and his comrades, trapped in the deserted, snowy wild after a harrowing plane crash, are hunted and picked off by the wolves one-by-one … and the movie ends with Neeson, the only one left, making his doomed last stand.
Parents need to know that The Grey -- a wilderness survival movie about oil workers who live through a plane crash in the frozen wild and must avoid being devoured by wolves -- has very strong violence, including death, gore, and blood, plus wolf attacks and a scary plane crash sequence.
Each time a man meets a wolf, it means death has come for him. At the same time, the wolves are always there, always howling in the distance, always breaking a branch or leaving a footprint nearby. As in life, the men constantly live in the shadow of death. Thus the title—The Grey. Each man faces death in his own way.
“The Grey” was filmed entirely in British Columbia, Canada. Principal photography was done in the city of Vancouver and the ski resort of Whistler, about 80 miles north of Vancouver.
The plot makes sense. Violence/Gore: This movie includes a lot of gore and it is not intended for audiences under the age of 13. This movie includes people being brutally killed and eaten by wolves. It includes gruesome scenes with wounds, frost bite, and corpses.
The post credit scene had me torn. I'm glad they made that scene and yet I wanted to see THE ending we thought we would see. Your mind can't create the image of a spoiler because that's what happens.
It is here that the film finds its message when it embodies its philosophy of existentialism. If existentialism, as a philosophy, can be distilled to a simplified description, it is this: the universe has no inherent meaning, so it follows that existence—life itself—has no inherent meaning either. It is purposeless.
To quote from an article about the making of this movie: "To get the cast of 'The Grey' in the mood for the wild, director Joe Carnahan had wolf stew prepared for them. The meat was made from real wolves.
Ottway sees another vision of his wife, which now reveals that she was dying on a hospital bed, and suggests the reason for his earlier attempted suicide.
Anyone who's now seen “The Grey” knows that scene from the very end of the trailer comes at the very end of the film with no wolf fight actually shown, though Carnahan recently said during a Q & A at an early screening of the film at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica that while he never planned to use it, he did film a ...
No, he died. He was trapped in the den of the wolf pack, and fought the leader. The final post-credit shot is of Neeson and the wolf lying battered and bloody by one another's side. The wolf is still breathing, but I think the impression is that both of them are going to die, and Neeson seems to already be dead.
In the movie The Grey (2012), what does the following quote by John mean: "Once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I'll ever know. Live and die on this day.
