The Revenant

This review may contain spoilers!

While this is a pretty incredible film it's certainly not DiCaprio's best. I would give The Revenant an 8/10.

What I enjoyed about this film was the somewhat realistic portrayal of survival in a very raw capacity, DiCaprio played out several desperate scenarios such as eating raw meat and sleeping inside an animal carcass. The other aspect of the plot I really enjoyed was the vengeance arc that presented the conflict between DiCaprio and Hardy, it lead to a highly anticipated standoff that was very brutal to watch. The Revenant had a great score that really assisted the tone of the film, however the real strength was in the film's sound editing which presented such incredible natural sound giving this film a really unique vibe. The special effects in this film were spectacular, my mind immediately jumps to the bear scene in which there is a CGI bear that looks very realistic. The greatest aspect of this film for the most part was the cinematography, this film was without a doubt a visual masterpiece with long takes and immense establishing shots.

Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Hugh Glass, was a great protagonist for this film; it really took a talented actor like DiCaprio to show the pain, loss and determination that Glass went through with a minimal amount of lines. Domhnall Gleeson, who played Captain Andrew Henry, was quite a likeable character in this film; I liked that this role wasn't an inherently strong character but had some great morals. Will Poulter, who played Bridger, created a character who was both likeable and cowardly; the scenes shared between him and Hardy were some of the best of the film.Duane Howard, who played Elk Dog, was a great antagonist and an interesting display of the injustice done to the Native American people; the scene between him and Adde was one of the few that represented the loss of the Native Americans really well.

However the best performance came from Tom Hardy, who played John Fitzgerald. This has immediately set the bar for what I expect from antagonists this year. Hardy creates a selfish greedy man ruled by his desire to increase his wealth rather than help his fellow men. Yet quite like DiCaprio's role he too is a survivor, Hardy displays this through an intimidating physical presence and several scenes in which he unpacks Fitzgerald's beliefs. At the end of the day the most exciting scenes of the film are the ones Hardy is in and you wait the entire film for the battle between him and DiCaprio.

This film has a lot of unnecessary scenes and repetitive material that really bogs the film down, this is a slow plot and it's of no surprise considering that it's over two and a half hours long. I enjoyed watching Glass survive but there were a lot of scenes of him crawling about attempting to progress that got very repetitive very quickly. The subplot of the Native American tribe trying to find Powaqa was exceptionally redundant because it wasn't really important to the film as a whole. The cinematography was good for the most part but there were some scenes where DiCaprio's breath fogged up the lens or there were water droplets upon the lens; this seemed like an attempt to create a raw look to the film but instead it just pulled you completely out of the film. The editing for this film aided the pacing problems, I think the cutting could have served the film better if it was faster in places.

Forrest Goodluck, who played Hawk, would have been served better with a few more lines in this film; he didn't interact with DiCaprio enough before he died so you ultimately cared very little about his role. Melaw Nakehk'o, who played Powaqa, was a walking plot device in this film; she felt very redundant and was ultimately serving a boring subplot. Fabrice Adde, who played Toussaint, wasn't a particularly threatening or intimidating antagonist; in fact this wasn't really any depth at all to his role. Arthur RedCloud, who played Hikuc, wasn't developed as a character at all in this film; there should have been more scenes around Hikuc so that we understood who he was and where he came from rather than have him make weird noises and eat snow. Grace Dove, who played Hugh Glass' Wife, is indicative of another major problem I had with this film; the imagery was great but I wish the backstory of this character as well as that of Hawk and Glass had been explored better.