The Grey

Justin: Someone needs to nerf these wolf mobs. These drops suck. Wait, this isn’t Skyrim. I’m assuming you’ve seen the trailer for The Grey, so you know that Qui-Gon and the Ice Road Truckers get stuck out in the snow. This is a manly movie with stubbly dudes who are all working in Alaska for a reason. They are, as our wolf-hunting, super-emo Irish hero puts it, “assholes.” The season is over and everyone is on a plane back to the lower 48. There they will get paid and see their families again, well, the ones who have anyone to go back to. As the turbulence starts to worsen, a redneck version of Kurt Kobain jinxes it. Pretty soon the plane is hurtling through the sky in many different pieces. This plane crash scene is punishing to watch. All of a sudden you realize that this movie has a serious mean streak. Those who survive are basically the Village People: the mean one, the stupid one, the black one, the serious one, the construction worker. They never need to worry about eating each other or anything like that. They eat airplane food and at least one wolf, washing it down with little booze bottles from the airplane. They never have to turn on each other “like that one movie” points out redneck Kobain. One does not simply… walk back to civilization. The little fellowship is constantly being bullied by very ornery wolves that have a knack for striking right when it seems that the pressure is off. Super obvious spoiler: the guys get owned one by one until there’s basically no one left. Turns out the wolves are just one of many dangers. When the going gets tough, Neeson usually relives a memory of his lost love in flashback. Neeson is great and channels a great deal of emotion into this performance, which in no way takes away from the badassery. This is not Sarah Palin’s Alaska. The notion that God has abandoned them to survive on their own is a common theme that I liked. Did I say Sweden looked cold? Alaska makes Sweden look like Club Med. (Edit: I am registering a formal complaint with some shadowy internet organization or another due to Chels willfully stealing my Skyrim schtick.)

Chels: Once I left the theater after The Grey I was overcome with this weird sensation that I had seen this movie before. It was like I was watching a mis-matched compilation of scenes from various different movies and TV shows. The opener is rough to say the least. Not being a huge fan of flying, INTENSE plane crash scenes are gut wrenching for me. My worst nightmare incarnate basically. This specific combination of teeny tiny plane plus knowing you're flying over a giant ice desert equals nothing but bad news for everybody. Although I must confess that when the shit starting hitting the fan I was immediately thinking of a very different plane crash. Obviously some dudes survive the crash, some are in better shape than others. I mean, they have to survive right? Or this would be the shortest/most boring movie ever. In fact, you're actually kinda stoked on the dead guys. It gives the survivors at least the option of going all "Donnor Party" on the corpses, guilt free at that! The old "those guys were dead when I got here" defense will totally hold up in court. For a brief moment I think that this might just be another stuck-in-the-snow-so-and-end-up-eating-my-best-friend-to-stay-alive movie. Once these Ice Dudes inevitably bounce from the scene of the crash (duh, if you stay you'll turn into gnarly haggard popsicles bro), the movie starts to pick up speed. And that's when I realized I've been watching this movie for weeks now. Sitting my couch at home, watching Justin play HOURS and HOURS of Skyrim. The main difference is that in Skyrim you just get to run through the snow for what seems like an impossibly endless amount of time. Never freezing, and definitely never dying. Although you do get attacked a shit ton by wolves. When the Man on Wolf action really started to heat up, I was totally hoping the Skyrim theme would continue with some epic wolf battles. Liam Neeson really does an amazing job with a truly emotional, and believable, performance. But you don't really need to sell me a Liam Neeson movie, although I'll probably miss Battleship. All in all a solid movie I highly recommend. Nothing that you haven't seen, but not another ridiculous prequel or some ridiculous remake (that I know of). The only thing that would have made this movie better was if instead of wolves it was Liam Neeson versus a whole bunch of this guy. PS: Stay past the absurdly long credits, there's micro-mini scene at the end.