The Grey

Liam Neeson takes on the wilderness in The Grey.

(MA15+, 117 minutes). On general release. ★★★

A cursory plot description might create the impression that The Grey is a straight forward man-against-the-wilderness adventure yarn.

As oil refinery workers based in Alaska are flying home for some R&R, their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere. All but eight are killed, the survivors forced to head off across a hazardous, snowbound wilderness in search of sanctuary, with wolves following them every step of the way and the most experienced of their number, wolf-hunter John Ottway (Liam Neeson), assuming the role of leader.

The fact that writer-director Joe Carnahan’s previous film was The A-Team (2010), in which Neeson again plays the leader of a group of men on a mission, only further encourages the expectation of a conventional-genre movie here. On that level, The Grey is unlikely to disappoint.

But it’s also much more than that. Working with co-writer Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, Carnahan (who also made Narc and Smokin’ Aces) is as much concerned with the men’s states of mind as he is with their quest for survival. Right from the start, where a judicious use of Ottway’s melancholy voice-over lays the foundation for what’s to come, The Grey constantly steers us away from the action and towards the men’s interior worlds.

What follows sometimes visualises where their thoughts take them, but the dialogue guides us there too. In a deeply moving scene not long after the plane crash, Ottway comforts a dying man, telling him straight what lies ahead and explaining how best to deal with it: by looking inwards.

In this context, the men’s struggle to maintain their hold on civilised values acquires the same dramatic force as their battle against the seemingly insuperable odds.

‘‘It doesn’t seem right to just walk away,’’ Hendrick (Dallas Roberts) says when the group leaves a body lying in the open behind them. And whereas the pursuing wolves solve differences over leadership with fights to the death, the confrontation between Diaz (Frank Grillo) and Ottway over who should lead begins along the same lines but is resolved differently.

Smart and suspenseful, The Grey is as much a moral drama as an action movie.