10 Movies That Are Actually Good Besides The Marketing Gimmick

The trailers for Liam Neeson's 2011 thriller The Grey seemed a lot less interested in selling it as the existential meditation on grief and man vs. nature that it is, but rather promoting it as that film where Neeson punches a wolf.

Given Neeson's prior reinvention as an unexpected action hero, the film's marketing team couldn't resist but lean into it and place excessive focus on an apparent showdown between Neeson's hero John Ottway and a wolf.

The trick worked well enough given that The Grey easily tripled its budget at the box office, but it also racked up a so-so "B-" CinemaScore, which fell below most of Neeson's more typical action joints, suggesting audiences had been misled about what they were seeing.

It's frustrating that the marketing was so desperate to misrepresent the film as a more conventional action flick, because aside from all that nonsense it's actually an extremely well-crafted and surprisingly affecting drama about man's survival against the elements.