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The Grey | 2012 | R | - 2.7.10

A bunch of surly oilrig workers in Arctic Alaska and their leader (Liam Neeson) survive an airplane crash in the isolated, frozen wilderness, and have to face life threatening injuries, extreme blizzard conditions, meager supplies and grey wolves. Also with Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie and James Badge Dale. Directed by Joe Carnahan. [1:57]

SEX/NUDITY 2 - A man jokes after a plane crash, telling coworkers he wished the youngest men had survived so they (the older men) could have sex with them. A man tells other men to look for condoms in case they are in the wilderness too long (implying homosexual sex) and the men laugh. A man says the last sex he had was with a 53-year-old Eskimo prostitute and not very good. Several men joke that eating some sort of fish will make a person incontinent and impotent.
 Several flashback scenes show a man and a woman in bed (their heads and hands wearing wedding rings are shown); in one scene, we see the woman half-covered with a blanket and wearing a slip that reveals slight cleavage.

VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - Four scenes show a single man attacked and chewed by wolves until dead with blood seeping into the snow. Several scenes show one or two men grabbed by the legs off screen by a wolf and we see deep scrapes and bleeding as the camera cuts to bandaging scenes. A man's face is clawed and we see a wide red scrape for the rest of the film. A man falls through tall tree branches, lands on the ground with blood on his face and is attacked by three wolves that drag him off screen (we see a ring of blood around branches as the scene ends). A man finds a wide trail of blood leading to another man on the snowy ground, with blood and chewed gore surrounding him, and blood dripping from one hand; the man says that the wolves were not eating, but killing the man as a trespasser. A man kneels in snow, sees a pack of wolves ringing him and several skeletons of large animals, he tapes a long-bladed knife to one hand and three small glass bottles between the fingers of the other hand as weapons and the screen goes black (implying the man was attacked). We see a man's head and back as he urinates in the snow off screen when a wolf bites his leg in a blur; the camera cuts to a coworker bandaging the leg and we see a little blood. We see a man lying motionless on the ground with his feet extended away from the camera and it is unclear if he is dead.
 In a snowfield, a man whose face is bright red from windburn walks to a rise, looks over it and finds a blackened airplane in pieces, smoking all over and flaming in a couple of spots: we see over a dozen dead bodies scattered around the plane and a small amount of blood is shown under their heads, the man goes inside what's left of the plane and finds a half dozen people alive and bleeding moderately around the face and head (two men spit a little blood); a man yells, "I'm cut in half" but he is not injured, there's moaning and find a man whose stomach was sliced by the wreckage (we see red muscles and moderate amounts of blood), he groans and shudders, while another man talks to him as he dies and we see the open eyes go blank and stare.
 An airplane taking men to an Alaskan oilrig shakes and balks several times as two dozen men curse and shout; holes break into the cabin and food, papers, table trays and clothing fly away in the wind, flight attendants fall in the aisles off screen and disappear, the plane shakes violently, dives, oxygen masks descend from the ceiling and the screen goes black.
 Men ward off, then kill a wolf, roast it over a campfire, eat it while complaining of gristle and the aroma, cut off its head, and throw it out in a forest where other wolves are watching; one man takes out a knife, howls to the sky and when he sits at the fire, a wolf attacks him, biting his hand and another man's leg in a blurred scene (the camera cuts to gouges and blood on both men in a bandaging scene). A wolf attacks a group of survivors and one man blows the animal up with his spear (it's fitted with a shotgun shell at the tip and we see a charred mass lying on the ground as smoke clears). We see the back and side of a large wolf lying on the ground, breathing slowly (it is unclear if the wolf dies).
 A man falls into a river, rushes downstream and has a foot caught under a log; another man jumps in and breathes air into the caught man's mouth for him to use until the foot is released, but the man babbles, shouts and dies. A man suffers from oxygen deprivation and freezes to death in the night. In a flashback, we see a woman's head as she lies in bed; the camera cuts to a dripping IV bag and we hear that she is gone.
 A stranded crewman flashes a long knife and shouts at his group leader who smashes him to the ground quickly and shouts to stop it or they'll all die in the cold. Two scenes occur in a large bar in a warehouse, where men from the Alaskan oil fields fight in multiple brawls that include punching, kicking and breaking cue sticks over one another's backs (please see the Substance Use category for more details).
 Men stumble through knee high snow and suffer ankle and knee sprains. We see shadowy wolf shapes and glowing eyes in the distance during the day and close to a campsite at night. Many scenes feature howling, snapping, snarling, yipping and rising wolf breath behind trees; men struggle through blizzards and high snow to escape the pack of wolves, some of which appear giant.
 Two scenes show a man in the snow sticking the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth (he does not pull the trigger); in one of the scenes, he sees a wolf coming too near his settlement, fires the rifle at it and we see the animal lying on its side with blood on the ground and at its mouth; the wolf is breathing, but it slows and then stops, suggesting death.
 A man ties a long strap around his waist, jumps across a ravine and lands in a tall tree, stretching the strap; three other men shinny across it, the third nearly falling, but he makes it across.
 In dozens of scenes, the crash survivors shout profanities, argue, and challenge the group leader. A man is alone in the wilderness, he looks to the sky and yells a string of profanities at God and asks for help; he then collapses and says he'll do it himself. A man with a sprained ankle sits down in a clearing near a river with the view of a mountain and forest; he says he will end life here and it's better than drinking every night. In several scenes, men argue about whether there is a God and an afterlife.
 A man makes spears out of tree branches and puts a shotgun shell on the end of each one for each survivor.

LANGUAGE 10 - About 161 F-words, 49 scatological terms, 12 anatomical terms, 21 mild obscenities, name-calling (fool, liar, Great White Hunter, MacGyver, Fairy Tale, punk, chicken, fraudulent), 17 stereotypical references to men, the Irish, fathers, ex-wives, manual laborers, ex-cons, homosexuals, prostitutes, God, death, 4 religious profanities, 9 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - Two bar scenes (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details) show beer bottles and glasses of whiskey sitting on a bar and on tables with some men drinking shots of alcohol and women drinking cocktails and beer, men in several wilderness scenes drink alcohol from flasks and one man says his friend is Jack Daniels, and a man says that dying beside a beautiful mountain is better than drinking.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Importance of oil, dangerous animals, animal rights, survival, fear, death, conflict, cooperation, authority, integrity, and leaving behind family.

MESSAGE - Fight to the end, no matter what the odds.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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