Ridley Scott, Liam Neeson and a sensationalist short story writer created this alarming existential version of 'Little Red Riding Hood'. Liam being Red who meets the Big Bad Wolves and learns nothing in the end except that not doing your wildlife homework and making up your own scientific theories gets you bad reviews and low ratings.
'The Grey' opens in Alaska with Liam's voice over telling us that his fellow oil workers are men unfit for mankind: fugitives, drifters and general assholes. Then we see their drunken bar brawl of waste and indulgence. We will later hear that one of these so call misfits considers himself superior to his last screw job which was a fifty-three year old, fat, half Eskimo woman. This common 'John' places himself above a prostitute as if it doesn't take two to tango.
Next Liam shoots a Grey wolf as it runs through the oil fields trying to eat the oil workers. This flash of concocted nonsense is ludicrous because no wolf in its right mind would EVER attempt such a stupid move. Wolves are shy creatures that hide in the woods fearing for their lives if they even get one scent of a human. So why would a wolf sniff around in a camp full of those pesky rifle toting humans? Thousands of years of canine evolution tell the wolf that humans are the most dangerous animal. Wolves are not stupid, and besides they could smell the camp latrine miles away.
For 'The Grey' to work, the Big Bad Wolf of our childhood must be dredged up and the FEAR shoved down our throats again despite the fact that in American history not one documented wolf has attacked a human minding their own business. 'The Grey' is a Wolf Witch Hunt that limps across the frozen January screen in a bandage until the climax when Liam tries to kill a wolf that isn't there. It isn't there because after taking one look at Liam with his face contorted into a madman grimace and glass taped onto his waving hands, the terrified wolf would have split immediately to hide under the nearest rock.
The biggest sham of all is the Wolf Den Motif. The Alpha Female only dens in the warm spring to deliver her litter who soon leave the den to learn from the pack. Wolves are first cousins to the Artic Husky which burrows under the snow for warmth and wolves do the same. THERE WAS NO DEN and the thirty mile radius attack theory is a lie made up to support the ridiculous Wolf Den Nonsense just like Liam when he states: 'Wolves are the only animal that seeks revenge'...ridiculous. More exact, only humans seek revenge; wolves live in the moment.
Then we have the plane crash and the sham of wolves attacking a man and biting him in the leg and eating the other, which holds about as much scientific authority as the town gossip. Wolves would NEVER come near humans with fire. The Cave Men had fire too and wolves have had thousands of year of 'stay away from the crazy humans' experience. Why didn't Ridley just dig up Jeffrey Dahmer and have Jeffy Boy chase the crash survivors around with a meat cleaver? Now that would have been a true scientific fact.
Starving wolves might scavenge a dead human carcass, but would never approach a live human with a twisted Freddy Kruger face. You can scare away coyotes and wolves with just a clap of your hands, and the Alpha sending in the Omega is a sham too. The truth is an Alpha would NEVER go in much less a scared Omega, and being an Alpha has noting to do with size, just ask five-foot-two Napoleon.
'The Grey' is an ANIT-ENVIRONMENTAL film that has no redeeming wildlife truth or enlightening value. Well..O.K., Liam beat up the human Werewolves and this is what 'The Grey' is really about, not the real life wolf that God created. Once again the wolf is a victim of human greed and ignorance. Everything bad that happens to the men is caused by the wolves...how dumb. Why blame it on the wolves? How about the stupidity of boarding a rickety old airplane in the dead of an Alaskan Winter? Isn't that enough conflict for a truly creative writer to gather on? Wouldn't a better name for 'The Grey' be: Albert Camus and the Werewolves?
What makes the produces and writers of this movie any better than the greedy corporations that destroy our environment? Another 'I Hate Wolves' movie is made as this magnificent animal is once again massacred into near extinction. Our own Federal Department of Fish & Wildlife Service and hunters in America practice anti-wolf politics. They trap, poison and chase the wolves down with snowmobiles and helicopters and shoot them at close range like small, cowardly self deluded hunters and thanks to movies like 'The Grey,' they now have deranged fodder for their reckless wolf slaughter.
Wolf haters use extermination excuses like 'wolves kill caribou and leave none for us to shoot,' but the truth is that wolves are too slow paced and lack the stamina to run down a healthy caribou. Farley Mowat, environmentalist, who spent years in the Artic, concluded this when he lived among the wolves and wrote 'Never Cry Wolf' (also a movie, 1963). He says that wolves' diet consists mostly of small game like rodents or hares and if a wolf brings down a caribou it is only because the caribou is sick, injured or old.
The 'California Wolf Center' and The 'International Wolf Center' provide hundreds of books and DVDs on true wolf behavior. Farley Mowat went on to quote: 'Humans doom the scapegoat wolf into a mythologized epitome of a savage, and a ruthless killer when the real savage killer is man himself'.
'The Grey' opens in Alaska with Liam's voice over telling us that his fellow oil workers are men unfit for mankind: fugitives, drifters and general assholes. Then we see their drunken bar brawl of waste and indulgence. We will later hear that one of these so call misfits considers himself superior to his last screw job which was a fifty-three year old, fat, half Eskimo woman. This common 'John' places himself above a prostitute as if it doesn't take two to tango.
Next Liam shoots a Grey wolf as it runs through the oil fields trying to eat the oil workers. This flash of concocted nonsense is ludicrous because no wolf in its right mind would EVER attempt such a stupid move. Wolves are shy creatures that hide in the woods fearing for their lives if they even get one scent of a human. So why would a wolf sniff around in a camp full of those pesky rifle toting humans? Thousands of years of canine evolution tell the wolf that humans are the most dangerous animal. Wolves are not stupid, and besides they could smell the camp latrine miles away.
For 'The Grey' to work, the Big Bad Wolf of our childhood must be dredged up and the FEAR shoved down our throats again despite the fact that in American history not one documented wolf has attacked a human minding their own business. 'The Grey' is a Wolf Witch Hunt that limps across the frozen January screen in a bandage until the climax when Liam tries to kill a wolf that isn't there. It isn't there because after taking one look at Liam with his face contorted into a madman grimace and glass taped onto his waving hands, the terrified wolf would have split immediately to hide under the nearest rock.
The biggest sham of all is the Wolf Den Motif. The Alpha Female only dens in the warm spring to deliver her litter who soon leave the den to learn from the pack. Wolves are first cousins to the Artic Husky which burrows under the snow for warmth and wolves do the same. THERE WAS NO DEN and the thirty mile radius attack theory is a lie made up to support the ridiculous Wolf Den Nonsense just like Liam when he states: 'Wolves are the only animal that seeks revenge'...ridiculous. More exact, only humans seek revenge; wolves live in the moment.
Then we have the plane crash and the sham of wolves attacking a man and biting him in the leg and eating the other, which holds about as much scientific authority as the town gossip. Wolves would NEVER come near humans with fire. The Cave Men had fire too and wolves have had thousands of year of 'stay away from the crazy humans' experience. Why didn't Ridley just dig up Jeffrey Dahmer and have Jeffy Boy chase the crash survivors around with a meat cleaver? Now that would have been a true scientific fact.
Starving wolves might scavenge a dead human carcass, but would never approach a live human with a twisted Freddy Kruger face. You can scare away coyotes and wolves with just a clap of your hands, and the Alpha sending in the Omega is a sham too. The truth is an Alpha would NEVER go in much less a scared Omega, and being an Alpha has noting to do with size, just ask five-foot-two Napoleon.
'The Grey' is an ANIT-ENVIRONMENTAL film that has no redeeming wildlife truth or enlightening value. Well..O.K., Liam beat up the human Werewolves and this is what 'The Grey' is really about, not the real life wolf that God created. Once again the wolf is a victim of human greed and ignorance. Everything bad that happens to the men is caused by the wolves...how dumb. Why blame it on the wolves? How about the stupidity of boarding a rickety old airplane in the dead of an Alaskan Winter? Isn't that enough conflict for a truly creative writer to gather on? Wouldn't a better name for 'The Grey' be: Albert Camus and the Werewolves?
What makes the produces and writers of this movie any better than the greedy corporations that destroy our environment? Another 'I Hate Wolves' movie is made as this magnificent animal is once again massacred into near extinction. Our own Federal Department of Fish & Wildlife Service and hunters in America practice anti-wolf politics. They trap, poison and chase the wolves down with snowmobiles and helicopters and shoot them at close range like small, cowardly self deluded hunters and thanks to movies like 'The Grey,' they now have deranged fodder for their reckless wolf slaughter.
Wolf haters use extermination excuses like 'wolves kill caribou and leave none for us to shoot,' but the truth is that wolves are too slow paced and lack the stamina to run down a healthy caribou. Farley Mowat, environmentalist, who spent years in the Artic, concluded this when he lived among the wolves and wrote 'Never Cry Wolf' (also a movie, 1963). He says that wolves' diet consists mostly of small game like rodents or hares and if a wolf brings down a caribou it is only because the caribou is sick, injured or old.
The 'California Wolf Center' and The 'International Wolf Center' provide hundreds of books and DVDs on true wolf behavior. Farley Mowat went on to quote: 'Humans doom the scapegoat wolf into a mythologized epitome of a savage, and a ruthless killer when the real savage killer is man himself'.