goldenfiddle

The possibility of death is introduced, that possibility turns into inevitability, death comes and is then considered—The Grey is structured as a string of scenes that proceed according to this pattern. The repetition recalls Sam Peckinpah’s apocalyptic Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid—except that Carnahan, it turns out, is even less of a romantic than Peckinpah was. There is no grand West fading into an uncertain future, no slow motion, no “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”; these are fairly ordinary men letting go of their unremarkable lives in the face of a bleak, matter-of-fact, vivid, tactile doom.