Kurt Loder on The Grey and Man on a Ledge

January 26, 2012

What will it take to finally bring humankind together, writes Kurt Loder, to unite us all in respect and appreciation and a sense of shared purpose? How about a pack of vicious wolves intent on tearing us to bloody shreds? Judging by The Grey, director Joe Carnahan’s new deep-freeze thriller, that might do it.

Man on a Ledge, meanwhile, is a tight little crime thriller—a heist-movie variant—with a few small problems and one big one. Given the top-notchness of the supporting actors here assembled—particularly Ed Harris—the casting of doughy Sam Worthington in the lead seems crucially ill-advised. True, Worthington was also the nominal star of James Cameron’s Avatar; but really, who will ever think of that techno-epic as a Sam Worthington film?

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