The Walking Dead – 18 Miles Out

Last week’s episode of The Walking Dead really made it clear that it is a show with some problems.  The writers seem determined to make viewers hate Shane, but to that point he’d always been right, the one member of the group to really wake up to the reality of the world after a zombie uprising.  There’s only one rule now, survival, and Shane seems to be the only person who truly understands that.  The real bad girl is Lori, who was last seen whispering sour nothings in Rick’s ear, trying to make him turn on Shane.

In episode 10, Lori continues to be annoying and bitchy; inexplicably turning on Andrea by telling her she shouldn’t be outside working on her shooting skills when there is laundry and cooking to be done.  Thankfully Andrea fights back, making it clear in no uncertain terms that she knows about Lori’s affair with Shane, and also making sure Lori realises that what she is doing is more important than domestic chores.  Elsewhere on the farm, Beth (the previously catatonic girl) is now more alert and talking, although she’s hardly full of life, talking morosely about life being pointless and suicide.  It should be pointed out that the episode takes place a week or so after the events of last week, which explains why Rick and Shane are out on the road.

They reach a crossroads, and get out of their car to talk about, you know, stuff.  Rick tells Shane he knows about his affair with Lori, as well as what happened to Otis.  Shane doesn’t attempt to lie to Rick; he explains his decision to leave Otis behind, while reminding Rick that he only did it to save Carl’s life.  While there appears to be an uneasy truce between the two, the reason they are out there is because Randall, the kid with the hole in his leg, has apparently healed sufficiently for the group to err, mercilessly dump him in the middle of nowhere instead of taking him in.  It doesn’t really tie in with Rick’s decision to save him before, why bother if he was only going to release an injured young man back into the walker infested wilderness?

But before Rick and Shane can leave Randall alone, they get into a fight after arguing over what to do with him.  It’s a no holds barred fight, one that only ends with Shane wildly launches a wrench at Rick, only to miss, smash a window of a nearby building, and awaken a horde of walkers, eager for some delicious human flesh.  Again, like last week, the action away from the farm is satisfying and exciting; with Rick, Shane and Randall getting decidedly stab happy using knives to off walkers in an attempt to save ammunition.  Rick is forced to improvise though, as he gets trapped under a pile of walkers, and decides the best way to save himself is by shooting a walker in the head through the head of an already dealt with walker.  Yup, you read that right and it’s awesome.

But the problem with this episode is that Rick once again makes it clear that he wants the group to stay at the farm.  You can understand where he is coming from, with the farm providing food and shelter for his family, but the series will get very old, very quickly if season 3 begins at the farm too.  One hope for the show is the idea that Shane and Andrea could be forced to leave the farm by themselves, allowing what seems like the only two characters in the show that actually realise what living in a world after a zombie apocalypse means to have their own adventures on the road.  The show literally needs a new direction, there’s a whole world out there, what is happening in Washington or California or even on other continents?  The Walking Dead can still be a gripping show when it wants to be, the question is, how badly does it want to be?

@TheGlassCase

Rampart Review

Oren Moverman’s debut as a director, The Messenger, was critically acclaimed after its release in 2009. Woody Harrelson Captain Tony Stone, an army man whose job is to inform the next of kin after a soldier has been killed in combat. His performance in particular drew praise, and lead to Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for best supporting actor. In anticipation of watching Rampart, I watched The Messenger, but felt that co-star Ben Foster (Six Feet Under, 3:10 To Yuma) was better than Harrelson, and that the movie itself was reasonably good, but not great.

In Rampart, Harrelson plays a very different character. He is Dave ‘Date-rape’ Brown (why he has that nickname is probably not why you think), a member of the LAPD’s infamous Rampart division, who gains unwanted media attention after he is filmed beating a black man on the streets of LA. In his mind, he is being unfairly singled out, after the man he beat had crashed into his police car, and then pushed his door into Brown’s stomach before attempting to flee the scene. But police officials don’t buy that, and Joan Confrey (Sigourney Weaver) and Bill Blago (Steve Buscemi) both want him dealt with, or for him to apologise for what he did and retire. Brown is not that way inclined to put it mildly and later returns to the job, despite public protests demanding his removal.

Dave can hardly find respite from his job in his personal life, as he has two daughters from two wives (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche, who play sisters) and they all live together despite both sisters growing tired of his presence. He likes a drink and other women too, spending most of his time in the same bar picking up women. Robin Wright gives a good performance as one of those women, a lawyer named Linda Fentress. But this is very much Harrelson’s movie. He is in every scene, as his personal life and his career start to crumble around him. As things spiral out of control for him, he’s investigated by Internal Affairs agent Kyle Timkins (Ice Cube), and he turns to friend Hartshorn (Ned Beatty) for help that will have consequences that only succeed in making things worse.

Moverman shares a writing credit with James Ellroy, the author who has written so memorably in the past about the LAPD and police corruption (If you haven’t already, you really MUST read his LA Quartet, which includes LA Confidential), but it seems that the two did not really work together that closely. Ellroy wrote the original draft of the script, which the producers of the movie apparently thought was too sprawling and complex, asking Moverman to work on it and make it more cinema-friendly. Overman has suggested that the two may not have been in agreement over what was cut or changed from Ellroy’s draft, and the plot of the movie does seem to be missing Ellroy’s style.

When Harrelson was given the gig of announcing this year’s Oscar nominations, he made a quip about Rampart (in theatres soon) not being on the list anywhere. While Harrelson could certainly feel a little aggrieved at not getting a nomination for his excellent performance as Dave Brown, the movie itself is far from a classic. Unless James Ellroy decides to make his feelings known about the movie, it seems like we’ll only know Overman’s thoughts on it. Despite Harrelson’s performance, the movie is missing something, with a less than satisfying conclusion, and lacking the characters, dialogue and even wit of Ellroy’s novels.

Rampart is worth watching for Harrelson’s performance, but don’t expect to be raving about it to friends afterwards.

@TheGlassCase

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 5

Episode 4 was a low point for Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy.  The first three episodes of the show had been very inconsistent, with some very funny sketches mixed in with ideas that just didn’t work.  But the fourth episode had little going for it.  Aside from a Boosh-like opening sketch, the rest of the episode was a disaster, with poor new characters, and unfunny appearances from previously introduced ones.

Unfortunately, episode 5 is another poor episode.  The problem Luxury Comedy has is that the majority of sketches are just Noel wearing brightly coloured face paint, and spouting gibberish.  While there was plenty of that in The Mighty Boosh, there was also a self-contained plot in each episode, plus Vince Noir and Howard Moon, two relatively normal people to move the story along.  Luxury Comedy doesn’t have that, and while Noel sitting in his home has a running sketch throughout the show, the resolution of those at the end of each show rarely makes sense.

So in episode 5, there’s a mostly purple guy singing randomly about mashed potato and fish fingers, while Mike Fielding appears as his sidekick with a racing car driving over his hair.  There’s Iain Gauge, who has croissants on his face, and sings to toast, asking ‘Do you love me?’ ‘Non’ is the answer.

Sergeant Boombox, the cop with talking bullet holes on his arm, features heavily in the episode, having his own adventure with his nemesis, Count Ziggenpuss attempting to steal a ruby covered diamond the size of a cat’s head.  He also plays tennis with Iain, while Secret Peter umpires (before the ice cream van comes), then has a standoff with Noel, after an animated dolphin fighter pilot has dropped a bomb that Noel decides to nurture as a baby, which is subsequently revealed to be Boombox’s nephew.

Richard Ayoade turns up again as City Gent, blaming Ice Cream Eyes for the falling standards in education, but you wonder why he bothers.  Ayoade can and does do much better, having directed one of 2011’s best movies, Submarine.  So why is he turning up for a couple of minutes in a mostly poor show?

There are some good moments in the episode though.  Dondylion returns, his desperate positivity exposed again, as the sadly admits that the letters he’s sending home to his mother aren’t going anywhere, and his cellmate Ravi (Mike as a mentally challenged chimp) isn’t as clever as he’d hoped.  Roy Circles, the chocolate finger, relates a story about his time in South Africa which is quite funny, and the best line is reserved for a stuffed squirrel pointing a gun at Noel.

But for a show that lasts just over 20 minutes, three fairly decent sketches isn’t enough.  It’s clear that E4 have left Fielding alone to do whatever he likes with Luxury Comedy, but it is also clear that he has no quality control.  The worry is that the show gets progressively worse, and E4 find themselves regretting already renewing the show for a second series.  It would certainly surprise me if viewing figures were improving.

The Walking Dead – Triggerfinger

When reviewing episode 8 of The Walking Dead, I talked about the behind the scenes changes to the show, and the critical reception it has received. Episode 9 is the first episode where I’ve really understood why critics have been negative towards it.

But before I get there, let’s talk about the positives. The first half of the episode is actually very good. It begins with Lori fighting off walkers after her accident, before returning to Rick, Glenn and Hershel at the (now bloody) bar in town. After killing Dave and Tony, the trio are ready to return to the farm when friends of the dead twosome suddenly appear on the scene, looking for them. When they try to enter the bar, Glenn shoves the door closed, which ultimately leads Rick to try and explain what happened to Dave and Tony, why it happened and how best to resolve it.  And let’s just say that the new strangers don’t see things Rick’s way.

It’s a strong scene, as Rick, Glenn and Hershel try to survive this new threat, then the subsequent arrival of walkers, attracted by the gunfire. But while this is good Walking Dead, what comes in the second half of the episode is bad Walking Dead.

After realising that Lori has gone after Rick, Shane heads out to find her. He does so surprisingly quickly, but has to lie to her in order to get her to return to the farm. He tells her that Rick has already returned with Hershel, which literally is the only way he can stop her from trying to get into town to bring Rick home. But when they get to the farm and she realises she has been lied to, she turns on Shane. It’s something that just doesn’t work, as Shane WAS right to lie to Lori. There was no good reason for her to go after Rick, who hadn’t even been away that long when she made her choice.

The writers of the show seem determined to make Shane the bad guy, but in reality, he is always getting things done when he needs to. Yes, he did sacrifice Otis, but he came back with the equipment and medication needed to save Carl. Yes he did lead the slaughter of the walkers in the barn, but he eliminated a threat, and found Sophia at the same time (although slightly less alive than Carol had hoped). It’s difficult to side against Shane when he makes bold decisions that Rick can’t or won’t make, something which is shown again later in the episode when Rick does return to the farm.

Then there is Beth Greene, the seemingly catatonic girl upstairs at the farm. She seemed to appear from nowhere in the show, and to have her thrust into the episodes as an apparently important figure is an odd decision. There’s been no real explanation of who she actually is before this episode, but the viewer is supposed to be concerned about her. It feels like just another reason to keep the show on the farm, when it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s time for everyone to move on. The pairing of Shane and Andrea suggests that it may be those two that do leave, with the others staying behind, but even then Shane is still drawn to Lori, believing that their relationship when they thought Rick was dead was more real than Lori wants to admit.

So The Walking Dead is a show in a state of flux. There needs to be changes, but the writers seem unwilling or unable to make them. But the ‘next time on’ preview at the end of the episode shows what might be those changes. We’ll have to wait and see, but if change doesn’t come soon, The Walking Dead may be in a bit of bother.

@TheGlassCase

Man On A Ledge Review

Basically, the movie Man On A Ledge is exactly that.  Sam Worthington is the man in question, and he spends the majority of the movie on a ledge, outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan.  Worthington plays ex-cop Nick Cassidy, who claims he has been wrongly imprisoned after being accused of stealing a diamond worth $40million from businessman David Englander (Ed Harris).

But he’s not on the ledge to jump.  He’s out there to provide a distraction for his brother Joey (Jamie Bell) and his girlfriend Angie (Genesis Rodriguez) as they attempt to break into Englander’s vault, find the diamond and prove that Nick was set up.  It’s an elaborate and dangerous plan.  Englander might be a hugely successful businessman, but he’s far from squeaky clean, and Joey and Angie might just disappear if they are caught, while Nick will go straight back to jail.

To help his cause, Nick asks directly for Lydia Mercer, a police negotiator who has recently made headlines for the wrong reasons, after someone she was trying to save jumped from a nearby bridge.  Nick thinks that she will believe his story because she’s been made an outcast following her failure, but time is running out after the NYPD discover who he is.  When Englander is alerted to Cassidy’s actions (Englander owns the hotel and the building where he keeps the Diamond is across the street), he wants things dealt with quickly, ordering another officer from the negotiating unit to deal with it quickly or he’ll be out of job.  Elsewhere, Nick’s former partner Mike Ackerman (Anthony Mackie) is working out why Nick escaped from prison, and what he is going to do next.

As soon as the movie begins, it’s clear that Man On A Ledge is going to have one big problem, and that is its lead, Sam Worthington.  Supposedly a veteran New York city cop, Worthington’s accent is pure Aussie, despite Jamie Bell at least attempting an American accent as his brother.  He delivers his lines in one way, gruntily, with little range or emotion evident.  He can handle the action scenes capably, overpowering cops as he escapes from their custody, and taking on others later in the movie.  But despite appearing in big budget franchise movies like Avatar (assuming James Cameron ever makes a sequel, fingers crossed he doesn’t) and Terminator: Salvation, Worthington just isn’t a particularly good actor.

The rest of the cast is more than capable, with Ed Harris in fiery form as Englander, and Ed Burns and Titus Welliver as members of the negotiating team.  Elizabeth Banks might not be an obvious choice to play a tough police negotiator, but she gives a good and convincing performance as she tries to work with Nick to come to a resolution.

Other than Worthington’s performance, Man On A Ledge is a decent movie.  The way the script ties together is not particularly complicated or original, but the action is fine and the movie moves along at a good pace.  While it won’t be listed amongst the best movies of the year, it certainly won’t be amongst the worst either.  Man On A Ledge is enjoyable, not memorable.

The Walking Dead – Nebraska

When episode 7 of The Walking Dead finished, the group of survivors had made a big decision.  Having sought shelter at the Greene family farm, they had discovered a barn full of walkers, walkers who had once been family and friends of the Greenes.  Despite the protestations of patriarch Herhsel Greene, the group, lead by an enraged Shane, had mercilessly slaughtered the walkers, which included the long missing Sophia, Carol’s young daughter.

The group had come to the Greene farm after Rick’s son Carl was accidentally shot, and Hershel had operated on the boy to save him.  But he soon grew uncertain about the group remaining on the farm, and wanted them to move on.  Rick tried to convince him otherwise, but the group’s persistent breaking of his rules had made Hershel’s mind up.  Now in the aftermath of the ritual slaughter of the walkers from the barn, Hershel is even more certain that it’s time for them to go.

The Walking Dead returns after a winter break, and there’s been big changes.  Not on screen, as the group remains at the Greene’s farm, but behind the scenes, as series creator Frank Darabont has left the show.  While his departure was announced before season 2 began, the first half of the season had still been made with Darabont’s involvement.  But he was fired (or quit depending on who you believe) and replaced by his second in command, Glen Mazzara.  There seems to have been clashes behind the scenes about the direction the show was going in.  Darabont made his name as a film director (including The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist), and it appears that the producers of the show didn’t feel his movie aesthetics translated to television.  So he is gone, and Mazzara has stepped in, looking to make changes to the show.  But despite the show having a lot of critics and complaints, it has still proved to be capable of pulling in big ratings, with episode 8 drawing a larger audience than the Grammys when both aired last Sunday.

I personally enjoy the first seven episodes of the second season, although I can see why there have been criticisms.  The group has been at Hershel’s farm for too long, and the search for Sophia was not a particularly gripping storyline.  There are suggestions that AMC wants a static location for the show to save money, but even if that is the case, it is time for the group to move on.

But the events in episode 8 seem to point towards the show remaining on the farm for at least one more episode.  Witnessing the (second) death of his wife has changed Hershel, making him realise that the hope he had was misplaced, that he could not save his wife, or turn to God to save her.  He goes into town to drink alone, and Rick and Glenn go to find him.  This results in a great scene involving two dangerous looking men confronting the trio in a bar, men who have come from Philadelphia and want to join the group at the farm.  It’s a tense standoff and the highlight of the episode.

Elsewhere, Glenn and Maggie talk about whether or not he would stay behind if the group left, Lori makes a decision she may regret, Daryl seems to be alienating himself from the group, and Dale shares his concerns about Shane and his behaviour with Lori and Andrea.

Despite being stuck in the same place, there is still plenty going on in The Walking Dead.  But the show needs to move on soon, or it will get stuck in a rut it may be hard to get out of.

@TheGlassCase

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 4

Up to now, I’ve been enjoying Luxury Comedy.  Noel Fielding’s head is clearly filled with a million ideas, and most of them are, well, a bit odd.  While there was plenty of oddness about The Mighty Boosh, there were also two great central characters, Howard Moon and Vince Noir, to build each episode around.  In Luxury Comedy, there’s Noel himself, with a painted face, who lives in an open plan hut on top of a tree.  While he’ll have something to do that the show will check in on throughout, the rest of the show is made up of sketches with various characters.

So in the first three episodes, it was a bit all over the place.  There were so many characters crammed into the show that it was difficult to keep track of them all, but there was the occasional sketch that hit the mark.  The show started to find its feet and I thought episode 3 was the best so far.  But episode 4?  Not so much.

The episode did get off to a good start, with Martin Rogers, Noel’s estate agent (and a monkey), sitting with Noel, who tells us that they wrote the show together, and bought matching glowing headbands from Mark Knopfler (from Dire Straits).  Martin then announces that Noel touches him in the night-times, which Noel isn’t happy about because his mum watches.

But after that, it was the worst episode of the series so far.  Noel gets a call from Secret Peter, and finds out he is on Peter’s game show, which airs on Channel Boomboom (don’t ask).  He’s won a prize, and can choose between a banana, a speedboat, and a speedboat made of bananas.  The latter is the prize Noel wins, which happens to be the worst prize.  Secret Peter then shows Noel a version of his fantasy about having a speedboat, which features Dan Clark (Johnny Two-Hats from the Electro episode of the Boosh).

Joey Ramone is back, this time with his mum at the beach.  Joey is a bit body conscious, but the Scottish narrator persuades him to go in the sea anyway.  Elsewhere in the show, Smooth and Andy are making cakes that look like things, Dolly and Smooth are doing judo but Noel can’t join them, there’s a skate who producers records and has a story about how he got Bon Jovi to sing Living On A Prayer, and Fantasy Man has another adventure.

But the show’s nadir comes in the form of a bizarre (and utterly unfunny) sketch featuring Noel and his brother Mike as weird aliens who come to earth make weird noises and collect Panini stickers.  Even by the shows out there standards, the sketch is nonsense, and is way too long.

The first three episodes of Luxury Comedy were inconsistent, but each has had a few good sketches.  Episode four only really had Martin Rogers going for it, and that was pre-credits.  To keep the show worth watching, Noel Fielding is going to have to dump some of his ideas and concentrate on a handful of the best, otherwise it’s going to be too inconsistent to really become a good show.

@TheGlassCase

The Woman In Black Review

It can be hard for actors to move on after starring in a long-running and successful franchise.  While Viggo Mortensen and Harrison Ford became stars after Lord of the Rings and Star Wars respectively, some of their co-stars, like Billy Boyd or Mark Hamill, struggle to enjoy the same kind of success afterwards.

Now Daniel Radcliffe finds himself getting ready to move on.  After the phenomenal success of the Harry Potter franchise, it’s time for the leading man to find new projects.  He has already taken to the stage to star in productions of Equus and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, and now takes the lead in his first post-Potter movie, an adaptation of The Woman In Black.  The Woman In Black was first a novel, written by Susan Hill in 1983, and has previously been adapted into a television film, and a play, which has been running since 1989.  Now it has been adapted as a movie by Jane Goldman, who has previously co-written Stardust, Kick Ass and X-Men: First Class, but this is the first movie where she has the sole writing credit.

Radcliffe stars as Arthur Kipps, a young solicitor who is under pressure to keep his job.  This is because of the death of his wife, who died during childbirth.  Arthur has a son to support, and is told that he must travel from London to Eel Marsh in order to handle the estate of the late Alice Drablow.  He is made to feel less than welcome by the locals, with the exception of Sam Daily (Ciaran Hinds), who appears to be less superstitious, and suspicious, than other residents.  The locals want him to leave, but Arthur is determined to do his job, and goes to Eel Marsh house to work through Drablow’s papers.

He learns about the woman in black, whom the locals believe makes children commit suicide.  As he spends more time in the house, he has supernatural experiences, hearing noises and seeing faces, while events around the town see the locals turn against him even more.

Radcliffe gives a credible performance as Arthur Kipps, and although he spends a lot of time saying very little, he is able to convincingly portray a man becoming increasingly confused and scared by what is happening around him.  At 22 he is perhaps a little young to be playing a father, but his relationship with his son is not a big part of the movie.  Ciaran Hinds is the only other actor in the film that has a lot to do, with Sam being the only person in the town who seems sympathetic to Arthur’s position, and he also gives a good performance.

But The Woman In Black is a ghost story, and as a result, it relies on its scares and creepiness to make it a success.  Director James Watkins has previous experience of cranking up the scare factor, having written and directed Eden Lake.  The film is a Hammer production, but the scares in The Woman In Black seem to have more in common with recent Asian horror movies such as Ring and The Grudge than it does with more traditional Hammer movies from the past.  Hammer movies were notorious for their blood and gore, but this film is more about the kind of terror that comes from unexpected sounds, objects moving or coming to life seemingly by themselves and the sudden appearance of ghostly figures.

Subtle changes were apparently made to the first cut of the movie, allowing the producers to secure a 12A rating, but there are enough scares in the movie to make it unsuitable for younger children.  Most of them come inside the house, with Radcliffe alone and exploring the house and the secrets it holds.  The way the movie ends also has parallels with the previously mentioned Asian horror movies, but the story is fairly well rounded off before the credits roll.

Despite the rating, The Woman In Black is a solid, definitively adult, movie for Daniel Radcliffe to begin his post-Potter career with.  He seems more than capable of making a long career for himself in movies, having already shown he is able to be a strong leading man.  He’ll always be Harry Potter, but it seems unlikely that he’ll be remembered for a lot more than that series.

Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy – Episode 3

It only took 2 episodes before E4 renewed Luxury Comedy for a second series.  Although it feels like the show is still finding its feet, the channel has moved quickly to secure another 6 episodes, with Noel promising that the second series will be ‘more like a Wednesday morning’, claiming he wants push things further and make something even more out there next time.

It’s actually hard to see how he could do that, with the series already showcasing a large amount of wild and weird characters, with the promise of more to come in the rest of series 1.

Episode 3 kicks off with a good example of just how out there Luxury Comedy is.  Noel and his butler Smooth (an anteater) are complaining about a tutting mountain.  He’s not a fan of the show, but instead of leaving, he just sits there tutting, so Noel teaches him a lesson by giving him a hot teaspoon on the cheek.  But the thing is, even episode 3 gets more out there as it goes on.

Elsewhere, a plasticine Joey Ramone has his legs cut off, then sees one of them used by Colin Montgomerie as a putter, as he wins the Masters.  Dolly falls in love with a security hat, while Andy Warhol might be stealing Noel’s Fabs.  Richard Ayoade (who appeared as Dixon Bainbridge in the Boosh pilot, and then as Saboo after the show began on BBC2) makes his first appearance of the series too, as ‘City Gent’, and there’s also an appearance by Kim Noble, who has previously appeared alongside Ayoade in Darkplace.  He appears in the longest sketch of the show, featuring Fantasy Man (a character with blue sellotape eyebrows and facial hair), and his sidekick Big Chief Woolabum Boomalackaway, who can see 15 minutes into the future (if he does poppers first).  Fantasy Man’s adventures are narrated by someone who is rather more interested in checking his emails than actually finding out what Fantasy Man is doing this week, but it turns out he has to repair a tear between youtube and youporn, or all sorts of filth will be on the loose.

While episode 3 has a lot going on again, with even more new characters introduced, it is more structured than the previous two episodes, with Noel explaining how to travel by television, and dealing with the tutting mountains throughout.  The show is still inconsistent, and even the lengthy Fantasy Man sketch has good and bad points.

But the positives still outweigh the negatives in Luxury Comedy.  If Noel limits the number of sketches per show and ties them altogether like he does in the latest episode, the show will be all the better for it, and it may prove E4 right to sign up for more.

The Grey Review

You may have seen the trailer for The Grey and thought, its Liam Neeson fighting wolves, so it’s Taken in the snow!  But it’s not quite as simple as that.  Neeson plays John Ottway, a man who kills wolves to protect members of oil drilling teams in Alaska.  When his job is over, he joins other men on a flight home.  But they never make it, as the plane crashes after malfunctioning during a blizzard.  John wakes up in the snow, freezing and confused, but quickly finds the wreckage of the plane and seven survivors.  One of them is bleeding heavily, and John comforts him as he dies.

Taking control of the situation, he tells the rest of the survivors to help him build a fire or they won’t make it through the night.  During the night, a pack of wolves closes in on the group, but as they stand their ground, the wolves disappear into the darkness once more.  John explains that they may be near the wolves den, and if they are, the wolves will attack.  The group must leave the wreckage, and head south if they are to save themselves, and they must do it quickly, or the wolves will claim their lives before the extreme temperatures do.

While all this sounds like a good idea for a movie, The Grey is poorly executed.  The group of survivors all fit the clichés you expect in a movie like this.  There’s an annoying one, a ‘who put this guy in charge’ one, an injured one, an ‘I have a young daughter that I love’ one, a deep thinking one, an alpha male (Neeson of course) and a first person to die one.

It’s not really spoiling anything to tell you that they are inevitably picked off one-by-one, and as you’ll know from the trailer, Neeson offers at least one wolf a square go, and even punches one in the face early in the movie.  While Neeson vs. wolves is an entertaining concept, the script really lets the movie down.  As I mentioned before, it is clichéd and tedious.  There are a moments that make you jump, moments where the group turn on each other and a scene around the fire where each man tells a personal story about their families or experiences.  Aside from having wolves to contend with, each dramatic moment in the film will remind you of other, better, movies involving a group of people trying to survive in extreme conditions and/or being hunted by a dangerous foe.

Despite the film’s flaws, Neeson gives a decent performance.  He’s the only really recognisable face in the cast, and does most of the work, being the main man in almost every scene.  Ottway is a man haunted by his past, and is determined to fight to the end, whether he makes it home or not.  So to sum up, don’t watch The Grey expecting to see Neeson go twelve rounds with a group of wolves.  It isn’t a terrible movie, but the basic concept has been done before, and better.