Tom's Take: The Grey - 2 1/2 Stars

"Liam Neeson, amma let you finish, but Oceanic Flight 815 was the greatest plane crash of all time."

I actually liked this movie more than I thought I would. Based on the few commercials I saw, it seemed like it would just be another Hollywood gore-fest. While it was most certainly not lacking in this department, the violence was not at all gratuitous. This film’s draw was not to be another installment in a series of ever more violent and grotesque films (a trend which seems to be pervading the industry)- I found that refreshing.

I am still trying to figure out if this movie was intended to be allegorical in some way. You could just look at it as a bunch of dudes getting killed by wolves and fighting for their lives. But I think this is unlikely because of the way the wolves behave throughout the film. I don’t want to give any explicit details, but it is clear that these animals do not behave as they would in nature. If they felt threatened by these humans, they could have easily killed all of them early on. And that is, in fact, what they would have done. But instead we see them kill systematically, ritualistically- as though they are playing some sort of game with the humans. As if they are testing those who remain. This could be the case, or it could just be another case of people writing about things they don’t really understand.

So the movie wasn’t devoid of creativity, and it was not masturbatory in violence. However, it still didn’t really surprise me much. There were no things that happened that I really couldn’t expect. But the characters were believable enough, and it was visually appealing. Overall it was worth the 6 bucks for the HD rental.