On Sunday Ryan and I went and saw The Grey. I was pretty excited for it. Liam Neeson is awesome, especially when he’s shooting guns or punching people. And the thought of Liam Neeson fighting killer wolves, that’s pretty cool.

The film isn’t really about wolves. The film is about a group of men who are in a plane crash somewhere in deserted Alaska. They have to try and trek to safety while avoiding being killed by wolves. Seeing as Liam is a trained wolf killer, he leads the men on a walk to safety. Though there isn’t really much safety. It’s more like a walk to new locations to die in. There is very little wolf fighting in the film and the wolves aren’t really wolves. Well they are wolves, but as far as I can tell they’re there to represent death. Death that hunts them, death that will take them one by one. Death that they must face by looking it in the eyes. For an action film it’s very thoughtful.

It kinda felt like The Thin Red Line of plane crash survival films, except the characters did more talking, nature was less beautiful, and things were less subtle. Still the flashbacks and contemplation of life and death, it had a similar feel. I liked that it was happy to be a film for grown ups with violence and adventure in it.

So if you judge the film on normal action movie standards, it’d rate highly for substance. If you judged it on contemplative films about death standards, it’d probably be on the less impressive end of the spectrum. But go see it. Because it’s better than lots of stuff, and the more people see it the more Hollywood will see that action movies with meat are worth making.