Open Road Films

Liam Neeson helps airplane crash survivors flee to relative safety after a wolf pack targets them in "The Grey."

REVIEW

Late is better than never with "The Grey," a man's-man of a genre pic that will satisfy the action audience while reminding more discerning viewers what they saw in director Joe Carnahan's decade-old breakthrough, "Narc."

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However Liam Neeson's admirers feel about the disappearance of "Kinsey"-grade fare from his filmography, the film may be the best of his lowbrow outings, casting him convincingly as a broken man getting one last chance to prove his mettle. Neeson plays a sharpshooter among brutes, hired to kill wolves that threaten the oil-company employees -- "men unfit for mankind," he calls them in a nicely mood-setting voiceover -- populating a remote Alaskan outpost.

On the verge of suicide himself, Neeson must rally when a transport plane crashes, leaving him stranded with a half-dozen other men somewhere in the wilderness. Scenes of post-crash triage deftly establish him as a man of deeper resources than his peers: As he coaches a dying man through his final moments, speaking with calm authority, Neeson and the filmmakers ground the film -- promising that none of the deaths to come will be treated lightly, however pulp-flavored the script's perils may be.

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Testosterone rages among the survivors, particularly from a violence-prone ex-con (Frank Grillo), but the film makes that energy serve the story instead of behaving (á la Carnahan's "Smokin' Aces") as if macho posturing were the whole point. Skirmishes over what to do intensify once it's clear that a nasty pack of wolves are pursuing the men, killing them territorially instead of for food, and Neeson argues they must leave the plane to seek shelter above the treeline.

Some viewers will find the movie's slog through snow and pines longer than necessary, but Carnahan and co-screenwriter Ian Mackenzie Jeffers make the most of the time, wringing as much meaning as they can out of every test of courage and campfire bull session. Expected man-versus-wild, man-versus-absent-God themes ring more true than usual here, though not at the expense of the promised scares: Plenty of chase scenes and gory encounters keep tension high.

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Co-stars Dermot Mulroney and Dallas Roberts fill out supporting roles ably, lending character-actor color to the ensemble without threatening the pack's Alpha. Occasional grace notes (particularly with regard to sound editing) exhibit a subtlety unexpected from a filmmaker who just gave us "The A-Team," and even the tale's final standoff, while pandering to the more hotheaded members of the audience, manages to squeeze off one last shot of adrenaline without insulting more skeptical viewers.

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Lionsgate Films

Katherine Heigl plays Stephanie Plum in "One For the Money."

At last, the movies are starting to get ... if not good, at least interesting. And last year's movies are starting to hit DVD and Blu-ray, so if you're snowed in, stock up on films for home viewing.

Movies
Look around the next airport you're in and you'll see dozens of folks engrossed in books from the Stephanie Plum series. Plum is author Janet Evanovich's lingerie-saleswoman-turned-bounty-hunter, and the heroine of her numerically titled books. Now the first in that series, "One For the Money," is coming to the big screen, with the sometimes controversial Katherine Heigl as Plum. Book fans have high hopes, but we'll have to see if Heigl and the cast live up to the characters so many have already imagined in their heads. (Jan. 27.)

Does Liam Neeson really punch a wolf in the snout? In "The Grey," Neeson plays the leader of a group of plane crash survivors who are determined to make it out of the Alaskan wilderness alive. The trailer reveals that even those tiny liquor bottles they put on planes can be a weapon if you really need them to be. (Jan. 27.)

TV
The third "Spartacus" series, "Spartacus: Vengeance," comes to TV this week. If you watched "Spartacus: Blood and Sand," you know the gladiators have killed their master and escaped his brutal school. But are the Romans going to let them get away without a fight? Don't bet on it. (Jan. 27, 10 p.m., Starz.)

DVD
That poor family in the "Paranormal Activity" series! Apparently they've been cursed for decades, and in "Paranormal Activity 3," hitting DVD this week, we learn about how Katie and Kristi's growing up was more "Addams Family" than "Brady Bunch." The Bloody Mary sequence, where the girls stare into a bathroom mirror and try to summon the supernatural with that old slumber-party game, is jump-out-of-your-seat scary. (On DVD Jan. 24)

"Real Steel" also hits DVD this week, and it was a bit of a surprise hit at the box office. Sure, it looked like two hours of giant robots pounding each other, "Battlebots" style, but really it was a sweet family film. Hugh Jackman plays the dad and washed-up boxing promoter who gets to know the son he never really cared about as they try to fight their way up the rankings. (On DVD Jan. 27)