In Bruce McDonald’s ingenious twist in the zombie thriller, a radio station in a small Ontario town becomes an island within an island, the center of a desolate snowscape where citizens are suddenly reduced to dead-eyed, babbling monsters. That’s the dilemma facing an American couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) as they hop on the train in Beijing, become bunkmates with a sexy-but-dubious pair (Eduardo Noriega and Kate Mara), and get embroiled in a drug-related homicide case that jettisons them into the barren tundra of Siberia. As beautiful as the sightseeing can get on this journey, there’s really no point where riders would want to take an unscheduled stop, lest they be interrogated by a Russian narcotics officer in the desolate chill of a foreign land. Inspired by writer-director Brad Anderson’s own adventures on the Trans-Siberian railway, a famed stretch of track that extends from Beijing to Moscow, Transsiberian is one of the better post-9/11 movies to play on American fears of a hostile reception overseas. With nature as the primary foe, The Grey puts its hero through an elementary struggle that goes a long way toward justifying its testosterone kick and lupine hysteria. Carnahan does nothing halfway: Before his transport plane even crashes, Neeson’s grizzled oilman is contemplating suicide, which makes the events that follow seem both reckless and restorative, because he acts without fear of death. Of all the entries in the Neeson action cycle, Joe Carnahan’s The Grey stands out for attempting to extract their masculine essence, casting him in a survivalist action movie that pits Neeson against a pack of wolves, Neeson against the Alaskan elements, and Neeson against some of the half-dozen other men who question his leadership. Both films are silly to a fault, but Moland’s efforts to take the stuffing out of the revenge-thriller genre are a long-needed corrective to one-man wrecking crews like Charles Bronson and, well, Liam Neeson. But this one makes the list for being first and for casting Bruno Ganz as the leader of a Serbian mob that’s squaring off against a humble snowplow driver (Stellan Skarsgård) hell-bent on avenging his son’s murder. Even the jokey name of the hero - Nils Dickman here, Nels Coxman in the remake - isn’t much of a tweak. There’s not much qualitative difference between Cold Pursuit and its Norwegian source, In Order of Disappearance, perhaps because director Hans Petter Moland did not want to rebel against the director of the original film, Hans Petter Moland. Penn makes upstate seem like another planet, a snow-caked hinterland of eccentricity - a gas-station attendant gives out goldfish at the pump - and Roddy McDowall is particularly good as the grinning, Igor-like production assistant who lures Steenburgen into a nightmare. With a debt to Vertigo, the film casts Mary Steenburgen in a triple role - as a desperate New York actress who takes a mystery gig in a snowy manse upstate, as the missing actress she’s replacing, and as the sister of the producer/doctor (Jan Rubeš) who seems to be hiding a few dark secrets. The legendary Arthur Penn ( Bonnie and Clyde) took over Dead of Winter as a gun-for-hire after the original director bailed, but that gun still had a little ammunition. The weather is one obstacle among many, but Sheridan frames it as a symbol of a Native American culture that’s intensely insular and unseen. Yet Taylor Sheridan sets the film on a Wyoming Indian reservation in the middle of winter, and does everything possible to emphasize its brutality: The official cause of death is a pulmonary hemorrhage caused by breathing the subzero air, and conditions are so terrible that it’s a challenge just to get to the scene of the crime without perishing, too. Fish and Wildlife Service agent (Jeremy Renner) who has a better feel for the territory and its customs. In many respects, Wind River is a standard procedural, a follow-the-bread-crumbs thriller about an FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) investigating a rape and murder with guidance from a U.S. There’s not an unexpected note in this horror-thriller about attractive snowboarders who hole up in an abandoned ski lodge hiding a mysterious and stabby host, but Uthaug effectively contrasts the mountain exteriors and the muted interiors, which have the sickly pallor of the newly dead. It’s no surprise that the director of the Finnish slasher Cold Prey, enviably named Roar Uthaug, would emerge in Hollywood over a decade later with his Tomb Raider reboot, given his handle on genre formula and facility with the great outdoors. For Americans, it can be reassuring to learn that other countries, despite their advantages in health care and education, are still full of stupid, horny young people who ritualistically strike out to a remote location and allow some lunatic to hack them to death, one by one.
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