Its Trevor’s Top 25 Films of the last 25 Years, with #25, THE GREY, a 2011 film directed by Joe Carnahan, starring Liam Neeson. Oil workers get in a plane crash in Alaska and must survive the wolves that hunt them.

This is a melodramatic, pitch-black action survival story; laser-focused on what men value in the face of death, of how we greet the end, and what measure of dignity exists there. The film is grainy, colors blown-out, its primal. The pace never flags on its way to an inevitable end, even through misery and inaccurate wolf behavior. Watching Liam Neeson screaming at the skies; only 2 years after Neeson’s real-life wife was killed in a random accident, is something fundamental. A rage burning through the screen. This theme of emotionally stunted fathers; that image of a son wrapped in his closed-off father’s arms, that hits me.

Best Scene. I’ll go with Neeson on that riverbank, screaming, daring God to show himself. Its riveting and taps into so much personal trauma, I just find it a different level of acting. And I love his deeply humanist ending to that scene, ‘Fuck it. I’ll do it myself.’ The quiet desperately sad scene of Dermot Mulroney, his daughter’s hair tickling his face. And the ending, damn, the momentum build, the release of so much grief. Some may feel cheated, but the emotional journey is complete.

Best Performance. Liam Neeson, period.

This film is a tough watch, but reaches a stunning conclusion about humanity’s independence; a rejection of God’s indifference.