Liam Neeson’s $80 Million Thriller Left Roger Ebert So Rattled He Walked Out of His Next Screening

2008’s Taken is the most obvious starting point for Liam Neeson’s reinvention into a tirelessly productive action star, but it was 2011’s The Grey that revealed Neeson’s “one man against the world” thrillers could actually be surprisingly compelling and intense. In fact, one noteworthy person who was so affected by The Grey was iconic film critic Roger Ebert, who noted in his review at the time that he had to walk out of his next screening because he was so rattled by The Grey that it wouldn’t have been “fair to the next film.”

The Grey boasts an 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, one of the highest scores of director Joe Carnahan’s career (including the recent The Rip with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon), and it was a smash at the box office. It ultimately made nearly $80 million worldwide, and Box Office Mojo says it almost made back its whole $25 million budget on its opening weekend. People were wild about The Grey… provided they didn’t need to go see a second movie right after for their job as a film critic.

What Did Roger Ebert Say About ‘The Grey’?

Ebert didn’t name what the other movie he walked out of was (One for the Money with Katherine Heigl? Man on a Ledge with Sam Worthington?), but he claimed it was the first time he had ever walked out of a movie because of a previous film he had seen that day. “The way I was feeling in my gut,” he said, “it just wouldn’t have been fair to the next film.” Ebert also said that he was “stunned with despair” by the movie’s ending.

Later in the review, he talked about the “mounting dread” he felt as the movie went on, assuring himself that the movie “had to have a happy ending,” or at least “a relief in some sense.” He didn’t outright spoil The Grey in his review, but, suffice to say, it does not have any sort of traditional “happy” ending. He also teased the film’s ambiguous post-credits scene, in which nothing is concretely resolved, and it seems like that’s specifically what left the uncomfortable feeling in Ebert’s gut. Again, this isn’t the kind of movie that leaves you pumping your fist, or at least not very enthusiastically.

What Is ‘The Grey’ About?

Neeson and a crew of dudes that includes Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, and James Badge Dale play employees of an oil refinery in Alaska. Neeson, whose job is to shoot wolves that get too close, has recently lost his wife and is terribly depressed. The group is eventually stranded in the wilderness when their plane crashes, and they're gradually picked off by wolves and the oppressive cold.

Stalked by the wolves, Neeson eventually has to face off against the pack's alpha — and while that may seem like a spoiler, the film's whole marketing was based around the fact that Liam Neeson has to fight a wolf. The ending... is so stunning that it freaked out Roger Ebert and made him walk out of his next movie. That's really all you need to know going in.