Liam Neeson goes all primal in the gripping adventure thriller THE GREY
THE GREY (Joe Carnahan, 2012)
Opens Friday, January 27
www.thegreythemovie.com
Shortly after suicidal sharpshooter John Ottway (Liam Neeson) decides to kill a big grey instead of himself, the desperate man is fighting for his life, leading a small group of men who have survived a horrific plane crash only to find themselves right smack in wolf territory — and the wolves are none too happy that their territory has been intruded upon. Based on the short story “Ghost Walker” by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, who wrote the taut screenplay with director Joe Carnahan (Narc,) The Grey is an intense, gripping thriller set in the vast Alaskan wilderness. In the middle of nowhere, a gang of societal outcasts — Ottway, Diaz (Frank Grillo), Talget (Dermot Mulroney), Henrick (Dallas Roberts), Flannery (Joe Anderson), Burke (Nonso Anozie), Hernandez (Ben Bray), and Lewenden (James Badge Dale), who all work at an oil refinery at the end of the earth, since no one else will have them — must band together if they want to survive, something that is a whole lot easier said than done with this collection of miscreants. As the men battle the increasingly dangerous elements, the wolves hover just on the periphery, seemingly always at the ready to attack, especially at night. Meanwhile, Ottway has tender memories of being in bed with his wife (Anne Openshaw), who has left him, the flashbacks helping him focus on his natural survival instincts. But even the skilled hunter might have finally met his match with these fierce, vengeful wolves. Beautifully photographed by Masanobu Takayanagi, The Grey expertly mixes action-adventure with horror, filled with thrills and chills galore. Evoking Sigourney Weaver in the Alien series, Neeson lends class to the film with his sensitive portrayal of the severely damaged Ottway, a good man who is more than a little down on his luck. Carnahan rarely settles for the lowest common denominator, instead telling the primal story of Ottway’s inner and outer journeys with wit and intelligence — and plenty of scares. The new year is less than a month old, but The Grey is destined to be one of the best films of 2012. (And be sure to stick around for the end of the credits for a brief bonus.)
Following a launch party for her book about how she and two fellow Mossad agents in 1964 captured and killed Max Reiner (Edgar Selge), the notorious “Surgeon of Birkenau,” Rachel Brener (Gila Almagor) immediately learns that there is an old man in a Ukrainian nursing home claiming that he is in fact the doctor who performed horrific experiments on Jewish men, women, and children in the German concentration camp during World War II. Rachel is reunited with Zvi (Alex Peleg) and Ehud (Oded Teomi), who come up with a plan to eliminate the doctor once again to protect a secret that has been haunting them for forty years. But they’re no longer the brash, finely chiseled spies they were when they were young, leading to crises of conscience and other physical and psychological dilemmas. Nominated for four Israeli Academy Awards, The Debt is a tense thriller from director Assaf Bernstein, who cowrote the screenplay with Ido Rosenblum. The story weaves back and forth between the present day, as Rachel meets Ehud in Ukraine and they hash out their plan, neither one having done anything like this in decades, and 1964, when Rachel (Neta Garty), Zvi (Itay Tiran), and Ehud (Yehezkel Lazarov) were younger and more idealistic. The scenes in which the young Rachel visits the doctor, who has become a gynecologist, and pretends she is trying to conceive a child are particularly gripping, setting up a powerful conclusion. The Debt, which was recently remade in English by John Madden with Helen Mirren, Ciarán Hinds, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, and Tom Wilkinson and evokes such films as The Wild Geese, The Boys from Brazil, and QB VII, will open the Brooklyn Israel Film Festival on Thursday night at the Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill, followed on Saturday night by Yossi Madmony’s Restoration, which was named Best Feature at the 2011 Jerusalem Film Festival, and Dolphin Boy on Sunday night, which will be followed by a Q&A with codirector Dani Menkin and producer Judith Manassen-Ramon.