4) The Grey
When I first heard about Liam Neeson fighting wolves in the wilderness, I assumed it was just another cynical attempt at capitalizing on the success of Taken, which saw Liam Neeson finally able to use his imposing physicality in a movie towards its most obvious function: kicking European ass. Except in this case, it was him fighting wolves, not dudes. Like many others, I was expecting a dull survival tale involving a plane crash and Liam Neeson going one on one with some alpha dog and coming out on top because are you even being serious this is Aslan we’re talking about.
What we got from director Joe Carnahan was so much more. These survival tales are tricky because they can veer into cheese or boredom so easily. The Grey doesn’t ever really do either of these. It’s hard to say exactly what The Grey does, or how it does it so well, but there seems to be near consensus that this movie is terrifically engaging and affecting, and surprising to boot.
It was a movie few saw coming. We ended up with this really gritty tale of men in the wilderness, with one particularly fascinating and mysterious character proving himself to be the strongest, or maybe just the luckiest, but what even that amounts to is unclear. This may be the most sparse pitch among those on this list, but in skilled hands the simplest idea can sustain hours of truly captivating cinema, as is the case here.
