I have just added 256 Blu-Ray screen captures of Joe from his recent action/thriller The Grey. The film is set to be released on May 21, and UK visitors can pre-order it here, whilst US visitors can buy it here from May 22.
Joe Anderson Talks ‘The Grey’, Rehearsing the Film and Acting in -20 Degree Weather
In Joe Carnahan’s excellent film, The Grey, Joe Anderson plays Flannery, a loudmouth who constantly gets under the skin of his fellow oil-riggers. When their plane goes down, he and the rest of the survivors (Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, James Badge Dale, Ben Bray and Nonso Anozie) are forced to work together to fend of packs of wolves hungry for their blood.
Anderson is the son British theatre actors and he told me that even though he grew up surrounded by the profession, he didn’t think he’d ever actually be an actor. After backpacking around the world, he decided he wanted to become a director. But since he couldn’t afford coming to America and go to film school, he thought he’d go to drama school to learn about actors. And the rest is history.
Joe talked to me about the shoot and what it was like to work in freezing weather, working with Liam Neeson, and one particularly bad audition where he had to play an espresso machine.
Liam Neeson’s The Grey–cementing the actor’s relatively new-found status as action star–raced past expectations to gross $20 milion in its debut at the domestic box office.
The Grey, directed by Joe Carnahan, led another good weekend at the box office. So far, 2012 revenues are running nearly 10 percent ahead of 2011 as moviegoing continues to pick up the pace.
Tom Ortenberg’s Open Road Films is distributing The Grey, about a group of men stranded in the Alaskan wilderness after a plane crash (the cast also includes Frank Grillo and Dermot Mulroney). The $25 million pic was produced by Liddell Entertainment and Scott Free Productions.
Audiences gave the action-thriller a B- CinemaScore, with males making up 60 percent of the audience. Heading into the weekend, tracking suggested the film would open in the low to mid teens.
Interview: Acting Is About The Head Space, The Honesty, The Integrity And The Balls
Joe Anderson is the son of two pedigreed British actors, not that you’d know it from his biggest roles. He’s done his time playing Jane Austen’s older brother (Becoming Jane) and Joy Division bassist Peter Hook (Control), but his lean muscles, shaggy hair and ear for mimicry have made him Hollywood’s new favorite redneck. Following his standout role as a Southern deputy in The Crazies—a must-watch performance in a b-movie that’s terrific fun—Anderson was cast as Flannery in The Grey. A wiry punk with a big mouth, few friends but several ladies (or so he says), he’s the type of all-American scruff who lives on adventure. That is, of course, until adventure tries to take his life.
You’re British, and typically Liam Neeson plays an American. Since Liam was playing Irish, why weren’t you playing British?
It was funny because when I walked into the room to meet Joe Carnahan, according to Joe, I kind of bounded into the room, and he looked at me and said, “You’re Flannery,” immediately. That was almost the first thing he said. Then I said,”Oh, okay” and that was that. We never really discussed it much more. He kind of told me who he though this guy was, and when he saw what I was doing, that was it. I think Flannery has to be American. I just don’t think there are those characters in England. I think he’s quintessentially something from over here. Well at least I think so because I’m from over there, so how would I really know?
In certain, over-excitable corners of the blogosphere, The Grey has been renamed Wolf Puncher. That’s understandable: the trailer does, after all, go heavy on imagery of Liam Neeson strapping miniature bottles of liquor to his knuckles, then limbering up to face a slavering beast. But Joe Carnahan’s follow-up to The A-Team is actually a long, long way from that bicep-baring, tank-flinging slab of macho cheese. A tale of men dropped into an extreme survival scenario, it’s best described as a meditation on grief and resilience. And if that makes it sound boring, it’s not. At all.
The opening sets the tone: while the other roughnecks on his oil-drilling crew celebrate the end of their Alaskan stint, loner John Ottway (Liam Neeson) wanders out into the snow, kneels down and puts a shotgun barrel in his mouth. For whatever reason, the howl of a far-off timber wolf makes him opt out of suicide — for now. One horrific plane-crash later, Ottway finds himself lost in the wilderness, the wolf’s brethren relentlessly stalking him and his fellow survivors, a fire slowly sparking to life in our hero’s eyes.
It’s a meaty role, and Neeson sinks his teeth into it and doesn’t let go, whether he’s growling lines like, “I’m going to start beating the shit out of you in the next five seconds,” or quietly talking a man through his protracted death. You believe, 100 per cent, that this is the man you’d want by your side when everything goes to hell.
Ottway’s clearly the alpha male of the pack, with the rest of the group far more hazily sketched — there’s an ex-con (nasty), a family man (wears glasses) and so on. But that’s kind of the point. The whole tale can be read as a metaphor: a grief-stricken man wandering in the woods of depression, haunted by demons that just won’t leave him alone, trying to hold himself together long enough to make it out the other side.
Or you could just grab some popcorn and enjoy it as one of the best survival horrors in years. Carnahan succeeds where the likes of The Way Back failed, making this trip to the edge of hell more thrilling than draining. No green screens here, just a bona fide freezing forest where even the trees can kill. As for the wolves — a combination of puppetry, real beasts and 300-style CGI — they’re as wily, implacable and haunting as fairy-tale creatures. Except Red Riding Hood never strapped miniature bottles of liquor to her knuckles.
Verdict
Carnahan’s best work since Narc, with a powerhouse performance by Neeson and real emotional heft. So, as much Gut Puncher as Wolf Puncher.
2012 | The Grey
2012 | "The River"
2012 | Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. II
2012 | Supremacy
