JOE CARNAHAN: BLOOD, GUTS, BULLETS AND OCTANE (1998) / THE GREY (2012)
We’re going to go rogue this one and actually start from a film that wasn’t the director’s first. This is because to fully appreciate the enormity of the gap between Joe Carnahan’s first and most recent films – and to understand his story as a director overall – we have to first have a quick flick through some of the others.
The first of Carnahan’s best known catalogue is Narc (2002), which was moderately successful but frequently held up as being clichéd. Then came Smokin’ Aces (2006), again not dramatically unsuccessful, but this time suffering from comparisons to the movies of Tarantino (but not funny enough) and Guy Ritchie (but too brutal). Then, in 2010 he strayed into Michael Bay territory with his reboot of The A-Team. In almost all of his projects, Carnahan was continually accused of simply replicating the styles of other directors.
But this is the time to go back and look at his first film. Because – despite the slightly blunt title (Joe Carnahan is not known for pulling punches with anything he does or says) – Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane does show a style that was much more his own. It is not entirely smooth in its execution and does sacrifice too much plot to the focus on visuals and a slightly hyperactive pace – and it is also true that the cut-aways and on-screen titles are familiar tools of this area of the trade. But it has a distinctive quality; regardless of who else was making what around him, this was the sort of director Carnahan was. He just didn’t quite make it past the stiffer competition.
Basically, it often seemed as though Carnahan was doomed to suffer from poorly timed releases. Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane itself only went on limited release and remains largely unrecognized: The A-Team was widely thought to have entirely missed its target audience and we probably should admit that releasing Smokin’ Aces after Pulp Fiction and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was a bit like chucking a candle at a fireworks display.
But then, we come to The Grey. Watch this film directly after Carnahan’s previous two movies and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the speakers had finally blown. Whereas Carnahan’s films are generally an onslaught of noise, action and ever-changing sets and scenes, The Grey is often silent – and always pensive, brooding and desolate. It is the directorial equivalent of suddenly throwing cold water over the audience. Even the movie’s beginning has nothing with which to hook the audience in other than the bleak, cold atmosphere and the slow, hypnotic tones of Liam Neeson’s cryptic voice-over. It is ironic that it is the film in which so little happens that we actually get to see so much more of the director that Carnahan could be – but it works perfectly.
There was just one problem: The release. In a move that must have finally convinced Carnahan to just feed his marketing department to the movie’s wolves and have done with it, The Grey was advertised as an action movie when it is nothing really of the sort, especially not in comparison to Carnahan’s other films. The Grey contains action sequences, but only ones that contribute to its true nature as a survival thriller – or a man vs. nature movie, as Carnahan himself describes it. To sell it as an action film could only leave the quiet tension on which the movie really depends to be a disappointment.
In January of this year, Universal Studios announced that they were dropping Joe Carnahan’s next film, Stretch, from production. Clearly, the Curse of the Carnahan Movie Release continues. But The Grey – when approached properly – will remain for a long time yet Carnahan’s wholly deserved crowning glory.
