The Grey

3 The GreyIt’s sorta fun seeing Fair Oaksian writer-director Joe Carnahan make himself at home in a pseudo-philosophical thriller about starving freezing bruiser oil drillers led by Liam Neeson and stalked by wolves in the backwoods of Alaska. Part Budd Boetticher western, part John Carpenter horror thriller, part douchey beer commercial, The Grey was adapted by Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers from Jeffers’ story Ghost Walker, and its literary ambitions are built in, if not fully built out. Running most smoothly as that kind of horror procedural for which characters’ deaths seem more thoroughly engineered than their inner lives, the movie delivers good visceral anguish. Supporting players including Frank Grillo and Dermot Mulroney do occasionally redeem their token parts, but of course the best thing about it is habitual winter-movie action-hero Neeson holding court as a brooding human alpha male. J.K.