3. The Grey
An example of misleading marketing and wrong expectations dooming a film, The Grey came right in the middle of a string of mindless Liam Neeson action films and no one expected this to be anything different. Instead, we got arguably the most philosophical mainstream Hollywood film of the last few years and one that features less of Liam Neeson fighting wolves with his bare hands than it did ruminations on man's survival instincts. Expecting a run of the mill action thriller, audiences were understandably perplexed and the film opened lower than many other recent Neeson endeavors. Liam Neeson plays a suicidal wolf hunter who survives a plane crash with a few other members of an oil drilling team, stranded in the middle of nowhere. With no weapons and no place to hide, the survivors slowly get picked off one by one by a pack of wolves who's den lies nearby, leading to the film's devastating climax. The Grey didn't connect well with audiences due to its bleak nature but it did pick up some excellent reviews, A.O Scott named it as one of his favorites of 2012 and Roger Ebert was so effected by it that for the first time in his career, he walked out of the next film he screened because he couldn't get his mind off it. The Grey features Liam Neeson's finest performance since Schindler's List, as he brilliantly plays a man with a dual nature, suicidal before the plane crash but absolutely determined to survive afterwards. The cinematography and musical score are also top notch and while it has some flaws, including about 15 flashbacks to the same scene with Neeson's wife, overall The Grey is an incredibly affecting example of filmmaking at its finest.