Review: 'Revenant' is a brutal, beautiful epic
The Revenant is the most intense thing you’ll enjoy over the holidays this side of family dinners.
Brutal and beautiful, director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s wilderness thriller (***½ out of four; rated R; opens Christmas Day in New York and Los Angeles, expands nationwide Jan. 8) showcases man’s savagery and humanity in simpler times. And Leonardo DiCaprio, his usual movie-star good looks hidden under a wild beard, gives a ferocious effort as a real-life frontiersman seeking to survive and avenge.
The Revenant is based on the harrowing true story of ace tracker Hugh Glass and his wintry journey through Montana in 1823. Glass (DiCaprio), his half-Indian son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) and the rest of a group of fur trappers are collecting pelts when they're attacked by a swarm of Native Americans, a sequence captured by Iñárritu with a sensational yet violent tracking shot.
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Things get worse from there: Glass is severely mauled by a mama bear trying to protect her cubs, who've wandered nearby. The men carry Glass, seemingly close to a visit from the Grim Reaper, for a while, but the mercenary John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) wants to leave him, get home and get paid. When Fitzgerald tries to kill Glass, Hawk intervenes and is murdered, as his father looks on in horror.
Fitzgerald tells their crew that Glass is dead and they continue on, while Glass slowly recovers and tracks the men down to find his son's killer.
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The Revenant, shot in all natural light, is as visually stunning as Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's Oscar-winning Birdman. It didn't make for the easiest production schedule but looks absolutely amazing onscreen, especially with some horizon shots that make the natural world around these men seem almost heavenly while they go through hell.
The filmmakers also capture the constant sense of danger that pervaded the lives of men such as Glass, and the results are not for the squeamish. The scene where Glass gets ripped apart like a chew toy is lengthy but well done, and DiCaprio sells every painful bite and clawing completely.
'The Revenant' captures Leonardo DiCaprio's true grit
DiCaprio has long fostered an impressive body of work, yet this is on another level: He has very little dialogue, given that Glass spends much of the movie alone and trying not to die. He guts a horse so he can climb in and stay warm through the night, he grows more emaciated as the story progresses toward a bloody conclusion, but DiCaprio's powerful performance keeps you immersed in Glass' quest and rooting for the man.
Hardy is superbly villainous as Fitzgerald — there's not much backstory with him, which is fine, since it's better that he doesn't have any redeeming qualities. Will Poulter gets a nice supporting turn as Jim Bridger, a man caught between helping Glass and facing Fitzgerald's mighty wrath, and Domhnall Gleeson contrasts his Star Wars: The Force Awakens bad guy with a role here as good-hearted fur-trapper leader Andrew Henry.
The Revenant is a throwback look at a wild time in American history, and the team-up of Iñárritu and DiCaprio gives this era a deserving epic.