If you enjoyed watching Liam Neeson battle territorial wolves in Joe Carnahan?s The Grey — and plenty of moviegoers have — then you'd be well-advised to look into Lee Tamahori's 1997 thriller The Edge. Starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin and perhaps best characterized by screenwriter David Mamet's trademark clipped dialogue, the film is an unusually strong entry in the survival-story tradition — and one to which The Grey owes at least a spiritual debt (if not more).
This genre is certainly well-trod territory, and perhaps for good reason: Dramatically speaking, it's pretty hard to get it wrong. You strand characters in the harsh wilderness. They experience hardship. Eventually they learn to face mortality with some measure of grace. They make it out, or they don't. The Grey is the more genre-typical of the two films and draws more readily from those aspects that are common to all stories of its type, with the added attraction of some great camera work and a strong performance from Liam Neeson.
The Edge, however, transcends those trappings to offer a more philosophical, character-centered naturalist meditation. Don't let the overcranked trailer fool you:
The difference between the two films is all the more striking if only because their plot points are so remarkably similar, even for a genre that necessarily has to hit a few key points. In both, a plane crashes in a forest, and the survivors are forced to fend for themselves against the elements and wild beasts. While in The Grey, we see a marauding pack of arctic wolves randomly picking off crash survivors one by one, The Edge features an equally bloodthirsty grizzly bear. Both films have leaders emerge in the forms of Neeson?s Ottway and Hopkins?s…
Jessica Paré Jessica Simpson Zooey Deschanel Aaliyah Abbie Cornish Adriana Lima Adrianne Curry Adrianne Palicki
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