The biggest question this week will be whether or not Liam Neeson can continue his string of success with early-year movies. For some reason, Unknown and Taken both drew massive audiences. While neither was critically successful, people just love them some Liam Neeson. How could you not? He was Oskar Schindler; he and Gandhi single-handedly defeated the Nazis while being a mentor to the young Bruce Wayne. The one harbinger for this January is that The Grey offers a specific noun, and not an ambiguous adjective. People don’t like to be pigeonholed.
Man on a Ledge: Well, if nothing else, this film cannot be pilloried for false advertising. It is in fact about a man on a ledge, the negotiator trying to talk him down, and his goal to “take down the man that stole everything from” him and “to prove that [he’s] innocent.” This could be entertaining, but I’m not sure if I’d bet on “good.” Truthfully, it seems like a major misdirection from the beginning, which will probably develop into a crude rip off of Spike Lee’s Inside Man or a better version of Tower Heist.
One For The Money: Good news, everyone. Katherine Heigl is back on the screen, and this time she’s starring in a movie that might just rival the success of Jennifer Aniston’s The Bounty Hunter. I’m not as adamant a Heigl-hater as many critics, but I don’t find her particularly funny or talented. Knocked Up was solid, but she was kind of loud and shrewish, much like she was in Grey’s Anatomy, The Killers, and 27 Dresses. Perhaps her donning of a Jersey accent lifted via repetitive viewings of The Sopranos will make this former Macy’s peddler turned bounty hunter – er, “recovery agent”? — a more well-rounded and deeper character. I can only hope that an attraction develops between her and her mark she’s destined to bring in for $50,000, but what are the odds of that happening?
The Grey: Ottway (Liam Neeson) is an oil driller who works security, “protecting man from the dangers they cannot see.” Unfortunately, he and his crew are involved in a plane crash on the Arctic tundra. But, that’s not all: they’re also in the presence of wolves that, presumably, see them as intruders – and look a bit like the nothing from The Neverending Story. Clearly, Ottway’s occupation will save some of them, even if it means taping airplane liquor bottles to his knuckles as if he were a poor-adolescent-Halloweener’s Wolverine. Ever since The Day After Tomorrow, I can’t watch any movie with lupine villains, but I kind of want to send Ottway a telepathic message before he takes “them on one at a time”: those bottles are plastic.
