*Originally written January 15th, 2016*
"Back from the Dead"
Alejandro G. Iñárritu (That's a name I won't be typing again) won the Oscar for last years wonderful Birdman. So expectations were high for the next vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio allusive Oscar. I'm pretty pleased to say that The Revenant is a brutal, bleak and unflinching masterpiece.
DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a frontiersman on a expedition who is left for dead by his crew after a bear attack leaves him in a near death state, his son is also killed by Tom Hardy's Fitzgerald so he goes on a quest for revenge through the hard wilderness once he gets his strength back.
It was a remarkable film. You feel every moment of DiCaprio's pain from the get go. His performance is truly committed, I don't know what the hell else he needs to do to win an Oscar after this. Honestly, he might need to die on camera for a posthumous award if he doesn't get it this year. I like to think of DiCaprio's journey of revenge in this as a metaphor for his ambitions of that Oscar, just going through so much, only to get knocked down, again and again.
Even with his Oscar nomination for this, I don't feel a lot is being said about Tom Hardy's performance as the villain of the piece. He was fantastic. Even though he's the bad guy, his motivations still make sense, so it made for a complex villain that there is not a lot of today.
Much like Birdman, I was left a little cold by the some of the more symbolic aspects of The Revenant. There was quite a few trippy dream sequences that come out of nowhere and honestly did not feel needed. They just come off as a bit pretentious. I'm sure there was a deep meaning behind a lot of it, but I didn't get it.
I did appreciate how straight forward the story was, despite the odd abstract moment. I did feel the 160 minute run-time a couple times throughout, this could of easily been trimmed a bit. This film is draining, you feel every minute of DiCaprio's journey. That said, every minute of the film absolutely gorgeous and there was so much craft and excellent film making was put into this. The opening shot was stunning and looked like one long shot. Every moment of cinematography was beautiful, even after just seeing a film set in the same time in the snowy frontier with The Hateful Eight, every shot looked fresh and unique here. Props to the sound and production design too, they may as well filmed this in the 1820's. Everything looked and sounded perfect.
The bear scene was something of a technical achievement to say the least. It had to be done with CGI for obvious reasons, but that took nothing away from such a thrilling and amazing sequence. Seriously, probably the most intense scene we're gonna get from a film all year. Every action scene struck and left me in awe, from the opening battle to the brutal and vicious showdown between DiCaprio and Hardy, it was all top notch. There was no compromise with the violence on display here either, everything felt real and raw, nothing felt fake or Hollywood.
Loved the man vs man/man vs nature aspect of the film too. There was a lot of pure survival stuff which I adored during the journey and then it all wraps up powerfully with a touching and emotional end. There was a bit of ambiguity of the ending, but that didn't bother me at all. I will urge you not to look up anything about Hugh Glass before seeing The Revenant though. Oh, yeah, this was all based on a true story and this was surprisingly true to the actual events, which only made me love it more.
The Revenant might be a little long, but it's a bleak, intense, perfectly shot, uncompromisingly brutal and beautiful film that packs an emotional punch and features a truly powerhouse performance from DiCaprio that more than deserves his fabled Oscar.
9/10 Dans
The Revenant is out now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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