Hmm, what can I say about this movie, it had a lot of potential that it fell short of.
It sets out to be a very existential film, dealing primarily with loss and death, from a very male point of view. Liam Neeson's character is a broken loner who has taken a job at an oil field in Alaska shooting wolves, seemingly punching the clock before he dies. Through flashbacks we learn of a woman which for reasons unknown he is no longer with, and see his intense longing for a happier time.
Working in the oil fields the film paints a portrait of fairly rough, dodgy guys working at the oil field.
Anyway to cut a long story short the rag tag crew of oil workers are on a plane back to Anchorage when the plane goes down, killing most of the passengers.
The survivors find themselves in the middle of nowhere, in the freezing cold, with limited food and seemingly no way out. Then wolves show up.
I'm going to be pretty brutal here and sum up what is wrong with this movie. Basically it fucks up the premise by making the wolves into these ridiculous mythical creatures, absurdly large and menacing and sound more like grizzly bears. They are unrelentingly aggressive and blood thirsty. If anything they come across more like Hyenas, aggressive for the sake of it. Obviously some exaggeration is required for dramatic effect but it crosses the line into the ridiculous.
The wolves aside the other stupid aspect of the movie is the characters seemingly have no issues with the basic concepts of survival, e.g. : Staying warm, finding water, sufficient food, fighting off frost bite, etc etc. The characters seem to magically never get hungry, or frostbite, and don't seem to need to drink water.
Otherwise the movie has some interesting ideas. I think if the wolves aspect were played down a little and they focused more on the landscape being the real challenge to their survival, the movie might work.
Otherwise it has a lot of potential that it falls short of.
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