6/11/15: Don’t Forget About the Power Glove!

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Adam J. Minnick, Alan Longstreet, Animal Trilogy, anti-authority, anti-establishment, anti-hero, Ape, awkward films, Buzzard, cinema, con artists, Cool Hand Luke, Coyote, dark comedies, experimental film, film reviews, films, Freddy Krueger, Harmony Korine, indie films, Jason Roth, Joe Anderson, Joel Potrykus, Joshua Burge, Katie Call, long shots, Marty Jackitansky, Michael Cunningham, millenial angst, Movies, Nintendo Power Glove, odd movies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Quentin Dupieux, Richard Linklater, slackers, stylish films, surreal, Teri Ann Nelson, writer-director-actor-editor, youthful angst, youthful rebeliion

When Marlon Brando uttered the immortal rejoinder “Whadda ya got?” all the way back in 1953, it’s highly unlikely that he had Marty Jackitansky in mind. 60 years later, however, here he is, ready or not: the heir apparent to Johnny Strabler, Holden Caulfield and “Cool Hand” Luke Jackson, Marty is the anti-establishment anti-hero that our era needs (and deserves), the kind of cynical, self-serving smart-ass who flies the middle finger by default, in the same way that some folks slip on plastic smiles before punching the daily clock. He might never be anyone’s idea of a conventional hero but for any poor sucker caught in the clutches of the modern working malaise, he just might be the only hero we’re gonna get.

Marty and the rest of the colorful oddballs that orbit around him are all residents of multi-hyphenate madman Joel Potrykus’ ingeniously warped Buzzard (2014). Not only does Potrykus write, direct and edit the film (the third part in a trilogy that also includes Coyote (2010) and Ape (2012)), he also has a prominent role as Marty’s delightfully obnoxious, uber-nerdy co-worker. It’s a lot to bite off for any filmmaker but Potrykus, with only his second feature film, makes the whole thing look ridiculously easy. The result? One of the quirkiest, coolest, funniest and just plain out-there films I’ve had the pleasure of seeing all year. At this rate, Potrykus runs the risk of joining such vaunted company as Quentin Dupieux, Harmony Korine and György Pálfi as a first-rate purveyor of outsider cinema.

By day, our humble “hero,” Marty (brilliantly played by Potrykus mainstay Joshua Burge), toils away in the kind of anonymous, homogeneous cubicle graveyard that seems more minimum-security prison than place of work. Well…”toil” is really a relative term: you see, Marty is the kind of fella who internalized the “work smarter, not harder” maxim more than most, turning it into the kind of do-or-die statement of purpose that characterizes the most successful con artists. In fact, virtually every waking second of Marty’s existence is given over to scams of one sort or the other: he orders expensive office supplies from work, “returns” them at a nearby office supply store and pockets the cash…he eats nothing but frozen food, most of which he receives for free after constantly complaining about the “quality,” usually after he already finished licking the pizza sauce off his fingers…he rescues discarded food from a McDonald’s dumpster and returns it to the counter for a “fresh” replacement. Marty isn’t running a game: his entire existence IS a game, one that he seems to be handily winning.

When he’s not constantly scamming, Marty appears to only have three other interests: pounding metal music of any and every variety (Norwegian black metal seems to be a particular favorite), anything horror-related and video games. In other words, Marty is the very picture of arrested adolescence: with his Doritos-and-pizza-sandwiches, constant Nintendo playing and brain-rattling thrash, Marty is every loner who ever lived on their friend’s couch, every “twenty-something-teenager” who ever tried to shuffle their way through this mixed-up world of ours. Hell, Marty has such laser-focus that his prize personal project is a glove that combines the old Nintendo Power Glove with horror icon Freddy Krueger’s razor-bladed weapon-of-choice.

As he yawns his way through a workday that holds absolutely no interest for him whatsoever (Marty’s a temp at a bank, which easily stands as one of the most anonymous, thankless jobs out there), he gets a “golden parachute” dropped into his lap, so to speak: Carol (Teri Ann Nelson), his supervisor, hands Marty a small mountain of returned customer refunds to process. Marty’s job is fairly simple (he just has to call the customers and/or look up their current addresses) but he gives it the same expert touch he applies to any work project: he half-asses it before finally giving up. After a mix-up with the birthday check that his mother mails him, however, Marty is introduced to the joys of signing checks over to himself.

In no time, Marty is supplementing his other (ill-gotten) income by depositing the customer refunds into his own account. After his supremely geeky co-worker, Derek (Potrykus), uncovers the scheme, however, Marty’s paranoia begins to kick in. Once Carol casually drops the bomb that she, personally, monitors the account that the refunds are drawn from, however, Marty’s whole world begins to collapse. Despite the lack of any sort of organized investigation, Marty goes on the lam, convinced that his scams have finally caught up with him. Armed with only a pocketful of stolen checks, a combo Power Glove/blade weapon and a sneer that could wrap around the planet twice, Marty is bound and determined to make it out, on his own terms. He’s gonna have to stay sharp, though: in a world full of idiots, phonies, squares and drones, any nail that sticks out is guaranteed to hit hammered down.

As a bit of disclaimer, I’ll begin by saying that I have a particular fondness for anything where a clever, roguish anti-hero sticks it to our modern shit-storm of a society: blame it on too many viewings of Cool Hand Luke (1967), Caddyshack (1980) and Stripes (1981) during my formative years but I always back the rebel, regardless of the situation. In this regard, Buzzard hits the bull’s-eye dead-center, presenting me with one of those unforgettable shit-disturbers that I prize so highly.

Marty Jackitansky, to cut to the chase, is a great character, one of those literary/cinematic creations that is so instrumental in helping us make sense of the world we live in. Like many presumed drones, Marty is as deeply mired in the system as his peers: the major difference, of course, is that they’re merely marking time, whereas he’s trying to carve out his own bit of reality. In many ways, Marty is the very best kind of role-model one could have: he, literally, spends every waking moment of his life indulging in all of the things that he loves, without giving much thought to the stuff that doesn’t matter.

Unlike Derek or the other temp, Stacy (Katie Call), Marty has no interest in “doing a good job” at work: this kind of work doesn’t matter, ultimately…it has no inherent value, beyond the meager paycheck, and brings no great worth to his life. Rather than pretend that worthless things like his office temp job actually matter, Marty treats them like the ridiculous jokes that they really are: it’s not so much that Marty is an eternal optimist as that he, literally, doesn’t sweat the small stuff (including all of the societal niceties like “hanging out” and making small talk).

The kicker, of course, is that Potrykus is much too clever a filmmaker to simply present us with a “lovable ruffian” (although, to be fair, nothing about Marty really says “lovable”) and take easy pot-shots at society. Rather, we get a no-holds-barred view of Marty’s process, which means that we get a front-row-seat to his inevitable paranoid breakdown. Potrykus (and Marty) know that you can only flip off life for so long before you get as good as you get: his downfall doesn’t have as much to do with his slippery moral slope as it does with the fact that, in the end, none of us can escape the machine. The film’s brilliant final image isn’t so much a marvelous bit of magical-realism as it is the realization that nothing is ever quite what it seems: you can break out of one “prison” only to find yourself right back in another.

While the filmmaking here is absolutely top-notch, there’s no denying that Burge shoulders an enormous amount of the burden. His portrayal of Marty is so perfect, so wonderfully insular, that he immediately vaults into the upper-echelon of cinematic outsiders like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s (1975) Randle McMurphy or the aforementioned Holden Caulfield. There’s not much margin for error, here, since Potrykus’ style leans heavily on extreme close-ups and awkwardly long takes: if Burge wasn’t always completely invested, if we couldn’t see the spark of Marty’s rebellion in every single smirk, squint and chortle, this would all get old ridiculously quick. Instead, we get brilliant scenes like the one where Marty shovels spaghetti into his face while wearing a pristine, white hotel bathrobe. In and of itself, the scene means nothing: when you factor in Burge’s complete mastery of his character, the scene becomes something much more…it becomes triumphant, the perfect synthesis of mania and joy, a “final meal” consumed at a crossroads that leads either to victory or oblivion.

Burge isn’t the only one to watch here, however, even if he’s undeniably the film’s focus. Just as great, for different reasons, is Potrykus’ performance as the unforgettable Derek. Quite frankly, Derek is an awesome character, sort of the unofficial patron saint of basement dwellers everywhere. Between his “party zone” (the sad-looking basement in his dad’s house plus one of those cheap colored-light things from Spencers), his self-important proclamations on everything under the sun and his Bugles/Hot Pockets/Mountain Dew diet, Derek is a gaming-culture Everyman. He’s the kind of person who tries to turn co-workers on to terrible pop music, takes every opportunity to show he’s not “gay” and forces his house-guests to watch him play video games. Derek is the kind of character who could have been unbelievably insufferable and hateful yet, thanks to Potrykus’ all-in performance, he becomes an integral part of the film. It also helps that the side-splitting scene where he munches Bugles in faster and faster succession is, without a doubt, the single funniest gag like this since Lucy tried to eat all those chocolates.

There are so many layers to Buzzard that it’s difficult to get everything on the first go through, despite the apparent simplicity of the film. While it’s tempting to view the movie as a series of Marty’s adventures, the contrast with the “real world” is just too cutting to ignore. This becomes especially true once Marty goes on the run and his actions become increasingly violent and more unpredictable. Similar to the moment when we first realize just how disturbed Travis Bickle really is, it takes a while before we “wake up” to the reality of what Marty’s done. It’s quite telling that the film’s finale can be read as either abject success or failure, depending on the individual sensibilities.

As should be quite apparent, I absolutely loved Buzzard. The film has a great look (even the extreme close-ups eventually won me over), is genuinely funny (Marty’s “White Russian” response to “Is your name Polish?” might be my favorite quip of the month) and carves out its own path with ruthless focus. In many ways, the film reminded me of Quentin Dupieux-lite (despite seeming like a negative, that’s actually quite the positive) or a slightly warmer, friendlier co-mingling of Richard Linklater and Harmony Korine. While there are some genuinely strange elements to the film, it never quite hits the surreal heights of something like Wrong Cops (2013) or Gummo (1997), although there are certainly elements of both to be found here.

What the film absolutely does not remind me of, however, is Rick Alverson’s odious The Comedy (2012), another recent odd to aimlessness in the modern youth. The reason for this, I think, is pretty basic: while The Comedy sought to portray a group of privileged, self-obsessed hipster assholes waging war on “polite society” through a series of pranks and un-PC jokes, Buzzard gives us a genuine, counter-culture irritant who seeks to realign the modern world to his favor. Marty Jackitansky may be rebelling against everything but he’s got a reason: when the whole world is full of shit, sometimes you just gotta make your own reality. While I can’t say I always (or almost ever) agreed with Marty’s methods, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t respect his goal. The most I could say for the assorted schlubs in The Comedy, however, is that I probably wouldn’t think about mowing them down with a steamroller.

Many of us were raised on the old maxim “an honest pay for an honest day’s work.” When the return isn’t “honest,” however, what does that say about the work? Marty Jackitansky knows that you can never get ahead playing someone else’s game, so he brings his own to the party. If that ain’t something worth celebrating, well, I don’t know what is.

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1/17/15 (Part Two): The Horns Know What the Heart Hides

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Alexandre Aja, based on a book, cinema, Daniel Radcliffe, dark comedies, David Morse, dead girlfriend, demons, fantasy, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frederick Elmes, friendships, Heather Graham, High Tension, Horns, horror movies, Ig Perrish, James Remar, Joe Anderson, Joe Hill, Juno Temple, Kathleen Quinlan, Keith Bunin, Kelli Garner, literary adaptation, Max Minghella, Michael Adamthwaite, mirrors, Movies, mystery, Piranha 3D, rape, revenge, secrets, small town life, suspicion, telling the truth, The Hills Have Eyes, vengeance, voice-over narration

When French writer-director Alexandre Aja first exploded onto the scene with the feral, jaw-dropping ode to unmitigated carnage that was High Tension (2003), it looked like the horror world had found their next uncompromising dark master. Red-lined, kinetic, non-stop and a veritable workshop in on-screen brutality, High Tension may have made an imperfect kind of sense (think about the central twist too much and the whole thing collapses into dust) but there was no denying the terrible power of the images and ideas contained within. Rather than capitalize on this bit of extreme nastiness, however, Aja appeared to have doubled-down in the opposite direction: his next two projects were both remakes – The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and Mirrors (2008) – while his most recent directorial effort was Piranha 3D (2010), which either counts as another remake or a sequel, depending on how generous you’re feeling.

This, of course, ended up being massively disappointing: here was another seemingly unique voice who appeared to have shackled himself to the remake train, foregoing any notion of “new” or “original” for the much safer territory of “been there, done that.” When Aja was announced as the director for a big-screen adaptation of Joe Hill’s bestselling novel, Horns, this seemed like a step in the right direction: at the very least, this was a literary adaptation, not another re-do of someone else’s earlier work. As it turns out, Aja’s version of Horns (2014) is good: well-made, full of clever moments, good acting and some genuine surprises, there’s a lot to like here. On the other hand, the film feels about 30 minutes too long and much of what’s on display here feels distinctly old-hat. This might not be the Aja who slept-walked through Mirrors or Piranha 3D but it also bears precious little resemblance to the Aja who blasted out frontal lobes with the sheer insanity that was High Tension.

Beginning with some voice-over and a suitably cool scene set to Bowie’s unbeatable “Heroes,” we’re quickly introduced to our hero, Ig Perrish (Daniel Radcliffe), and his current predicament. Seems that Ig’s girlfriend, Merrin (Juno Temple), has turned up dead and everyone in his small town, including Ig’s family, thinks he’s guilty of the crime. Shunned by everyone, publicly accused by Merrin’s father (David Morse) and given the cold-shoulder by all of his childhood friends, save his lawyer buddy, Lee (Max Minghella), Ig has become the town’s pariah, a social leper that everyone wishes would just disappear.

After he drunkenly desecrates the makeshift shrine that the townsfolk have set up for Merrin, Ig ends up with the local barkeep and wakes up in her bed the next morning. In a decidedly alarming development, poor Ig appears to be sprouting rudimentary horns from his head. Even stranger, however, is the way in which the bartender uncharacteristically gorges herself on food, in his presence: she seems to act as if possessed by some powerful force, unable to control herself. After several more awkward/humorous scenes involving overly honest medical personnel, clergy and his own parents, Ig comes to the startling realization that his new horns have the ability to force people to act on their deepest, darkest secrets.

In no time at all, Ig has decided to use his new power to conduct his own investigation into Merrin’s death: wandering the town like a scraggly, sardonic avenging angel, he “interviews” one person after the next, piecing together the details of Merrin’s last days as he goes. While the investigation takes place in the present, we also get copious flashbacks to Ig and Merrin’s youth, where they first fell in love and hung out with their friends Terry, Lee and Eric. These flashbacks hold little clues to the current mystery’s resolution, although Ig won’t know the full story until the final reel (astute viewers will probably figure this out way ahead of our intrepid sleuth). Once the truth is revealed, Ig becomes hell-bent for revenge, as he finds himself transforming into an increasingly powerful, unhinged and demonic force. Will Ig be able to bring his girlfriend’s killer to justice or will the flames of his own burning anger incinerate him long before he can make his final move?

There’s a lot to like about Horns: the cinematography is, in general, quite good and the soundtrack, full of nicely evocative songs like the Pixies’ “Where is My Mind?” and Bowie’s “Heroes,” works spectacularly well: the film actually had one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in a while, with the score being equally memorable. The acting is also quite good, with Radcliffe being especially impressive: if The Woman in Black (2012) hadn’t marked Radcliffe’s transition from the world of Harry Potter to more “adult” genre roles, his performance as Ig certainly makes this clear. There’s a certain charisma that’s never far below Radcliffe’s performance, informing every snarky comment, confused squint and determined glower that crosses his face. He sells the concept of the horns by virtue of not looking goofy wearing them, which says a tremendous amount about his performance.

Also on the plus side, it’s nice to see David Morse in a rare “good guy” role: all too often, the veteran character actor is the equivalent of a twirling mustache but he gets a chance to stretch out, a little, and play a genuinely conflicted, human being. I’ll be the first to admit that Morse’s very presence seemed to signify the guilty party but I’m giving nothing away by saying that his grieving, angry and rather irrational Dale comes down distinctly on the side of right in this issue. I was also rather impressed by Minghella, who brings a little bit of depth to an odd character. While I thought he could be a bit bland, there was always a great interplay between him and Radcliffe, which helped sell the friendship.

On the negative side, we get some rather dodgy special effects (the CGI snakes are particularly offensive) and the final transformation bears an uncanny resemblance to Tim Curry’s Darkness, which ends up injecting a rather unintentional level of hilarity into what’s supposed to be a very climatic moment. There are also some patently stupid scenes in the back half, such as the ones where Ig induces someone to take “all the drugs” and another where he makes a couple of characters act on their latent homosexual urges. The tone on these is pitched all wrong (the drug scene features a “trip” that would’ve seemed stale in the ’60s) and they come off eye-rolling rather than impactful.

The biggest issue I had with Horns, however, ended up being how damn familiar the whole thing was. While I haven’t read Hill’s novel, I found myself predicting so much of the action that it definitely felt like I had. Chalk it up to screenwriter Keith Bunin or the original source material but there were precious few times that I was caught off guard and I couldn’t help but feel that I’d seen this same story (minus the horns, obviously) many times before. Hell, squint and the whole thing looks a bit like Rian Johnson’s Brick (2005), again, minus the horns.

I didn’t dislike Horns: ultimately, the film is too slick and well-made (minus the damn snakes and poor Heather Graham’s bug-eyed cameo) to invite any kind of easy derision. When it all works, there’s a pleasant sense of del Toro-lite that, coupled with Radcliffe’s natural charisma, makes the film highly watchable.  When it goes off the rails, however, it’s actually pretty silly, which certainly tempers the stormy mood established by the rest of the film. Bar a few tell-tale moments, however (the shotgunned head and the pitchforkin’, for example), the film never approaches the oomph that characterized Aja’s earliest films (remake or not, The Hills Have Eyes was the furthest thing possible from a placid lake). More than anything, this feels like another multiplex horror, something to enjoy with some popcorn and a date. There are a lot worse things in the world but I can’t help but be disappointed, nonetheless.

6/6/14 (Part Two): Alpha Males

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action-adventure, adventures, Alaska, Alaskan wilderness, alpha males, based on a short story, Bronson, cinema, Dallas Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, faith, fighting animals, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frank Grillo, Greg Nicotero, guy movies, isolation, Jack London, Joe Anderson, Joe Carnahan, killer wolves, Lee Marvin, Liam Neeson, man vs. nature, Movies, Narc, Nonso Anozie, oil riggers, Ottway, plane crash, Smokin' Aces, snow, stranded, survival, survival-horror, The A-Team, The Descent, The Grey, voice-over narration, wolves, writer-director

Mankind likes to think that it’s the master of any domain it comes across but the reality isn’t quite as optimistic. Sure, we can go into frigid Arctic areas, travel deep below the sea and even walk on the Moon: if we put our minds to it, nothing seems impossible. Throw humans into any of these situations wearing just the frail skins we were born with, however, and see how far we get. We may be able to use technology and innovation to take us further than anyone has gone before but, at our core, we are shockingly fragile, insignificant little things. Without the various safety nets we establish for ourselves, like clothing, shelter and weaponry, humanity is very much at the mercy of the natural world. Hunters are all-powerful when they’re armed but look an awful lot like food when they aren’t. A shady banker with a computer can bring down the world: a shady banker, in the forest, with no protection, will get eaten by a bear…that’s just the way the world works.

Writer-director Joe Carnahan’s The Grey (2011) (an adaptation of Ian Mackenzie Jeffer’s short story, “Ghost Walker”), is yet another examination of “man vs. nature,” one of those time-honored tales where disparate and diverse personalities must come together in order to survive a greater threat. In the process, the characters will do lots of surviving, lots of dying and lots of personal discovery. While this type of story is certainly nothing new (hell, Jack London may have invented this subgenre all the way back in the 1900s), The Grey ends up being an extraordinarily powerful film, anchored by a quietly explosive performance from Liam Neeson and a strong, viscerally violent atmosphere. While popular jokes at the time may have cast The Grey as nothing more than “Liam Neeson punching wolves,” the film is a helluva lot more than that. In fact, it may just be the best survival-horror film since Marshall’s classic The Descent (2006).

We’re immediately dropped into the desolate, snow and wind-blasted wilderness of Alaska, where we meet Ottway (Liam Neeson), our guide through this particular wasteland. Ottway is a master outdoors-man and responsible for protecting the rugged members of an oil-rigging crew from the hungry wolves that endlessly patrol the icy wastes. Ottway is also a hopelessly damaged individual, suffering from some sort of unnamed loss (we get lots and lots of flashbacks) that drives him perilously close to eating a bullet. He doesn’t, however, and boards a plane with the rest of the crew, including Diaz (Frank Grillo), Flannery (Joe Anderson), Talget (Dermot Mulroney), Henrick (Dallas Roberts) and Burke (Nonso Anozie). When the weather gets worse, the plane freezes over and ends up crashing in a spectacular, absolutely thrilling sequence (talk about edge of your seat…literally): the lucky ones are killed in the crash. The unlucky ones, led by Ottway, must now survive in the harsh elements with only the clothes on their backs and a few canisters of pilfered airplane fuel to start fires. They need to get back to civilization but there are plenty of eyes watching from the woods…hungry eyes.

As Ottway does his damnedest to keep the survivors alive, he finds himself butting heads with the worst aspects of humanity, including greed, fear and the selfish desire to survive at the cost of everyone else. In particular, Ottway finds himself at odds with Diaz: while the vicious wolves circle in the darkness, Diaz and Ottway circle each other in the light, sniffing for weakness and constantly struggling for domination. Even as Ottway discusses the need to find and slay the alpha male wolf, the struggle for alpha dominance within the survivors threatens to tear them all asunder. Will Ottway be able to overcome his own emotional issues in order to fulfill his duties as group protector? Will the men learn to work together, against all odds, or will they continue to be picked off, one by one, until only their bones remain to remind of their existence? In order to survive, the men will not only need to overcome the wolves: they will need to become the wolves.

The Grey is, first and foremost, a glorious return to the kind of big-screen adventure-survival epics that used to be de rigueur at the box office back in the ’70s. In many ways, the film isn’t such a huge departure from films like Deliverance (1972), Jaws (1975) or Sorcerer (1977) but a much closer parallel would be the aforementioned one with The Descent. In many ways, The Grey is definitely a survival-horror film: the wolves are introduced in a way that establishes them as monsters (the glowing eyes and frightening baying) and the alpha male wolf is established in a way that sets him up as the “chief bad guy” (the scene where Diaz tosses the decapitated wolves’ head into the darkness, only to be met by the angry response call from the alpha male, isn’t much different from any scene where an evil leader reacts in anger to the death of a subordinate at the hands of the heroes). In this way, the wolves are very similar to something like Peter Jackson’s orcs or Marshall’s cave dwellers and serve a similar function in the film.

An action-adventure film lives or dies by its action sequences and, in this regard, The Grey is a complete stunner. From the initial plane crash to the heart-in-mouth scene where the survivors rappel down a craggy mountain-side to the final confrontation with the alpha wolf, The Grey is one incredibly intense scene after another. Carnahan masterfully coils and uncoils the tension, building up quiet, personal dialogue scenes into explosive action beats, prompting me to (literally) jump out of my seat on at least a half-dozen occasions. One of the scenes, which begins as a confrontation between Diaz and Ottway but ends as a confrontation between Diaz and a wolf, is so perfectly executed that it’s almost a textbook example of how to set-up and execute such a moment. I’ve never been a huge fan of Carnahan’s other films (I positively abhor the empty-headed Smokin’ Aces (2006)) but he displays an absolutely deft touch on The Grey that has me eagerly anticipating his next project.

The film almost always looks and sounds great (the sound design is particularly strong) but I wasn’t fond of cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi’s (who also shot the Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook (2012)) frequent over-reliance on blown-out visuals. His landscape cinematography was so beautiful that it was frustrating to have such an obvious visual aesthetic for the more intimate scenes: I get that it’s a cold, white, desolate place…no need to rub my nose in it. Additionally, in the minor quibble department, I felt that Ottway’s frequent flashbacks/dream sequences wore out their welcome pretty early into the film and frequently killed the forward momentum. The sequences did a little to help establish Ottway’s character, although this type of character development seems particularly heavy-handed and unnecessary.

Ultimately, however, no discussion of The Grey can be complete without singling out Liam Neeson for some special recognition. Although the rest of the cast is solid (Dermot Mulroney is particularly good as Talget), this is definitely Neeson’s film. Over the last few years, Neeson has been gradually morphing into an action star, not too far removed from what Bronson and Eastwood were doing in the ’80s and ’90s. In fact, it’s pretty easy to imagine someone like Bronson, Eastwood or Lee Marvin playing the part of Ottway: it’s a quiet, brooding role that requires not only plenty of ass-kicking but also some degree of wounded vulnerability. Ottway may be a man of action but he’s still just a man: Neeson shows us the confusion, fear and conflict beneath his stoic visage, without doing anything to denigrate his inherent heroism. Ottway is not some unrealistically pure “white knight”: he’s just as fucked up as everyone else, yet manages to work through his issues to do what needs to be done. It’s a truly multi-faceted performance made all the more impressive by how little (relatively speaking) Neeson says. Those flinty eyes tell a helluva story, however, and Carnahan/Takayanagi take full advantage of this with plenty of intense closeups, ala Eastwood and his similarly flinty orbs.

While The Grey could, perhaps, be considered the ultimate “guy movie,” (the only women in the film appear in flashback/dream sequences, which is probably rather telling) I think that there’s a lot more bubbling beneath the surface than mindless chest-beating and machismo. This is definitely an action film, through and through, and packed with enough hardcore, visceral violence to please even the most discerning gorehound (the film doesn’t skimp on the “wolves eating people” visuals and there’s one bit involving half of a guy that’s pretty difficult to watch). Along with action and violence, however, there are some surprisingly deep conversations about the nature of faith and there’s one particularly moving scene where Ottway helps a dying man pass on peacefully. They’re rare moments of beauty and serenity in an otherwise unforgiving, harsh landscape but they make the film an overall richer experience.

Ultimately, I found myself quite taken with The Grey: perhaps future viewings will help push it into the neo-classic status of films like The Descent but, for the time being, it simply stands as an extraordinary, ridiculously exciting adventure film. That being said, the film also features one of the most perfect final scenes I’ve ever seen (ruined only so slightly by an unnecessary post-credits tag), a scene that manages to be simultaneously regal, sad and ruthlessly badass. It’s a scene that stops right before it begins, leaving the viewer’s brain to fill in the gap. It’s a wonderful, powerful, amazingly cinematic moment: it’s what movies are all about (in my non-humble opinion) and any modern film should be proud to feature anything close to it. If the finale doesn’t find you on your feet, fist thrust heroically into the air…well, let’s just say that there may not be any hope for you, after all. The Grey is vicious, vital, bloody filmmaking at its very best: you’d be wise to give it a look sometime.