On the up side, you get to see a man punch a wolf in the face." Some reviewers and analysts say the film has an atheist theme, due to characters such as John Ottway (Liam Neeson) pleading for divine help but not getting any.
The film was about one man's journey from suicidal depression to finding the will to live. 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.
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.
“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.”
The wolves are symbols. Stand-ins for the real main character: death. Black and cunning, always shadowing, the wolves are always there, following the men from place to place, taking one, then another, then another. Each time a man meets a wolf, it means death has come for him.
Director Joe Carnage—oh, excuse me … Carnahan—ordered wolf carcasses flown in for the cast to eat so that the actors would “have a sense of the movie we were making.” He bought the meat from a trapper, meaning that the wolves likely suffered horribly in traps before being killed.
We had at least one staffer weeping into her Alaskan Amber when she found out Liam Neeson would be filming this adventure film in Smithers, British Columbia, instead of Alaska.
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.
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.
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.
By the end each character had accepted their death and moved on to the afterlife, carried by their wolf, except Neeson. He fought to the end. His life force was so strong that even in death he refused to give up.
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.
After their plane crashes in Alaska, six oil workers are led by a skilled huntsman to survival, but a pack of merciless wolves haunts their every step. After their plane crashes in Alaska, six oil workers are led by a skilled huntsman to survival, but a pack of merciless wolves haunts their every step.
According to Liam Neeson's account, the temperatures were as low as -40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit) in Smithers, British Columbia, where the film was shot. The snowstorms/scenes were real prevailing weather conditions, and not a cinematic illusion produced with CGI (interview: Episode #20.70 (2012)).
Shortly afterwards, the back of the plane is torn off and it crashes. the first oil worker, Chavis, who is Pinned under his seat. Ottway doesnt help him properly and he dies slowly before Eight people including Ottway survive the crash.
The Grey is a grotesque exaggeration of all the most inaccurate myths of wolf behavior. If it weren't for the fact that so many people are uninformed and tend to believe everything they see in movies it would be laughable.
A new movie called "The Grey" continues this tradition by misrepresenting wolves as violent hunters who harm humans. Nothing could be further than the truth, there having been only two recent fatal wolf attacks on a human documented in North America.
Today gray wolves have populations in Alaska, northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, western Montana, northern Idaho, northeast Oregon, and the Yellowstone area of Wyoming. Mexican wolves, a subspecies of the gray wolf, were reintroduced to protected parkland in eastern Arizona and southwest New Mexico.
There were a few memorable scenes for sure. However, the final scene where Ottway enters the wolves' den literally sums up the fears he instilled in the men throughout the movie (getting too close to the den). Not only has he lost all his companions at this point, he had essentially lost all hope for survival.
Less than a week after the debut of The Gray Man in July 2022, Netflix announced the sequel. As of now, the release date remains unconfirmed, with a potential debut in 2025. Ryan Gosling is set to reprise his role as Courtland Gentry, aka "Six," seeking vengeance.
“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.
