I’ve always wondered why we’re drawn to stories in which a relatable hero is put through absolute hell. I assume the first stories ever told were about rival tribes, untrustworthy people, and dangerous predators—the very things The Revenant is about.
What makes it more compelling than most movies is Leonardo DiCaprio’s willingness to get the shot. He actually plunges into ice cold water and crawls through real snow naked. There is so little cheating here and director Alejandro González Iñárritu, who won the Oscar for Best Director last year, wants us to know it’s all real, too; he doesn’t bother using a different take when his actor’s breath—or blood—gets on the camera lens. I’d say DiCaprio will probably win Best Actor if I didn’t think the Oscars has some illogical vendetta against him.
In the early 1800s, Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) and his “half-breed” son are trackers in a fur trapping outfit. Fellow trapper John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) is the kind of blowhard who has a problem with everyone, especially Glass. Fitzgerald is, without a doubt, the biggest movie asshole of the year. You don’t love to hate him like a lot movie villains, you just hate him, period, in the way you hated Nurse Ratched and Dolores Umbridge. After Glass is gruesomely mauled by a bear, what Fitzgerald thinks best is suffocating him so that he can no longer slow the others down.
The Revenant is a beautifully nasty movie, shot on lenses so wide the vast landscapes curl around the edges. There’s at least one ham-fisted visual metaphor, which you wouldn’t expect from a director of this caliber, but overall I enjoyed it, if only because Iñárritu forces himself to step out of his comfort zone yet again. But other than its lead performances, the only thing The Revenant really has going for it is its admittedly breathtaking technical accomplishments. I don’t think it will win Best Picture, if only because Iñárritu’s last film did, and it’s not my first (or even second) favorite western of the year.
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