The Revenant is the film everyone is talking about – the film that has finally won Leonardo DiCaprio his well-deserved Oscar. But is it everything that it has been hyped up to be? In a nutshell; no.
I don’t know whether my expectations were set far too high or this film just didn’t have the WOW factor it was made out to have but I found it long, dragged out and for the most part, uneventful.
The Revenant is based on true events and revolves around fur-trapper, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is left for dead after a vicious bear attack in the early 19th century. Barely alive, Glass journeys through the wildness in the quest to find the “friends” who betrayed him.
I found the first 60 minutes or so of this film very gripping. It had a lot of potential and I was hooked as the fur-trapping expedition were attacked by Native Americans and a bloody, intense fight broke out on screen. I could see why this film had so much attention directed at it. And when DiCaprio battled it out on screen with a very realistic looking CGI bear, I had pretty much decided this was going to be a great film. But then things began to go downhill; the fur-trapping group tried to carry Glass for the rest of the trip but finally decided to abandon him after being convinced by a very conniving John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Glass was left on his own to fight for his life and here the movie begins to slow down to a snail-like pace.
DiCaprio is of course fantastic; he manages to portray Glass brilliantly and shows the true determination of his character. The film however, is not very dialogue driven and the majority of the film involves DiCaprio huffing, puffing and heavily breathing. He has a handful of lines and when he does speak, its only ever delivered in a hoarse, croaky voice that is barely audible. The person who gave this film life however was the ever brilliant, Tom Hardy. Hardy grips the audience and adds darkness to this already intense film. He kept me interested and managed to capture the evilness of his character, whilst still being believable. He was definitely my favourite out of the two characters.
The Revenant also includes Domhnall Gleeson (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Harry Potter) and Will Poulter (The Maze Runners, We’re The Millers), joining Hardy as the fur-trappers.
This is essentially a film about one man’s battle with nature and here we see DiCaprio gutting a horse and climbing inside to keep warm, catching fish to eat, and scrapping marrow out of a bone. It is DiCaprio’s most challenging role yet and here we see the actor push himself to the limits in a bid to finally win that Oscar.
Maybe my expectations were set too high but after the fast paced battle scenes at the beginning of this film, the film took a whole new turn and the 156 minutes running time dragged out. The Revenant is worth a watch as it is the film that finally won Leo his Oscar but don’t be surprised if it isn’t what you expected.
As for me, I’ll take The Wolf of Wall Street over The Revenant any day of the week.
Overall Rating: 3/5
Paradise Spice 