Metacritic reviews

There's little in Joe Carnahan's previous films, marked by their frenetic, fanboy-friendly overindulgences, to predict the cold blast of The Grey, an old-fashioned, neatly arrayed survival story that almost reads like a reaction to the excesses of his past work.

The Grey avoids smug clichés, takes you to places you least expect and settles for no comfortable solutions, while it explores the dark shadows of the male psyche and finds more emotional fragility there than you find in the usual phony macho myths from Hollywood.

The Grey, a man's-man of a genre picture that will satisfy the action audience while reminding more discerning viewers what they saw in director Joe Carnahan's decade-old breakthrough, "Narc."

Don't be mistaken -- this isn't an artsy thriller. It is still, at heart, men vs. wolves, and the wolves definitely have the home-court advantage.

Moment to moment, the film is gripping and beautiful to behold (props to cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi for the mesmerizingly grainy, achromatic visuals). But caveat emptor to those expecting a hinterlands gloss on "Taken" with rapacious curs in place of nefarious Albanians.

The picture's dialogue-heavy stretches and ambiguous finale could leave ticketbuyers impatient for less chatter and more chomping.

This is admirably ambitious, but Carnahan's not nearly good enough a writer or director to pull it off: the results are portentous, muddled and not nearly as entertaining as Neeson's usual face-punching antics.

There's too much Jack London, and, as they systematically pick off the stragglers, too many CGI wolves go unpunched.

Neeson is always compelling, even in a movie as ridiculous as The Grey.

Carnahan didn't make a movie unfit for mankind but it certainly isn't worth mankind's money.