The Grey

The Grey is maybe the best addition to the sub-genre I call survival porn. Like actual porn, you see a startling amount of human anatomy, and there would be almost no dialogue without the word that begins with f and ends in uck.

Unlike the more traditional porn, there is no sex. Also, the body parts are mostly entrails from disemboweled men and the f-word has absolutely no erotic connotation.

This makes sense. If you were being stalked by a pack of wolves in the Alaskan wilderness, your vocabulary would also become very limited very quickly.

First, logistics: Gray wolves (always, unlike the movie, spelled with an A) live all over the northern hemisphere, and there are plenty of them in Alaska. However, they live in small family groups of, like, five. Alaska is a big place; there would never be a reason for a family that seems to be, oh, four dozen strong to live together. Also: Wolves don't hunt people for sport -- not ever, but especially not when food is plentiful.

And we know that food is plentiful even for this improbably large pack because the plane crash that stranded our men in the wilderness killed most of the people on board. Fresh meat, zero effort.

But then we wouldn't have a movie, and like I said, The Grey isn't actually about (gray) wolves.

The nine men stranded are all employed by an oil company to work on a pipeline in the very north of Alaska. When the movie begins, the snow has just begun and they are heading south for the winter. Being pipeline workers, they are a bunch of macho, foul-mouthed, antisocial, blustering assholes who would likely be committing felonies anywhere else.

As the wolves pick them off, one by one, the men are forced to confront their deepest fears, character flaws and softer sides in order to survive. This tactic isn't successful, but it makes the guys feel better about themselves. Liam Neeson plays Ottway, the only member with even marginal wolf expertise, given that his job is to snipe wild animals that interfere with the pipeline operations. But the plane crash crushed his rifle, leaving him with only his wisdom (you know, because he's Liam Neeson) and his will to survive.

This is a will he has to find in a hurry because, as the movie begins, he's on the verge of blowing his brains out for reasons that become clear only at the very end.

The characters are to some extent stock ones (the sarcastic naysayer, the spiritual family man, the annoying troublemaker, the black guy who dies early on). But before each of them meet their doom, we get to know them surprisingly well. The performances (especially Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts and Dermot Mulroney) are understated and realistic.

It's easy to imagine yourself trudging -- sloooowly -- for your life through mountains of snow as a pack of wild animals blithely lunges for your jugular.

And that is where the real appeal of survival porn lies. Because we leave the theater feeling relieved that we will never be trapped in the Alaskan wilderness, we will never be stalked by wolves and whatever problems we have, they maybe aren't so serious after all.

That this particular piece of survival porn is beautifully, breathtakingly shot in Alaska (British Columbia, really, but they're next door), a ridiculously gorgeous place, and features good actors steps it up a notch. I could have done without the religious philosophizing, but I don't disagree with the message: If you've gotta go down, go down fighting.

And the fighting is pretty awesome.