Absolute trash

Rating: 2/10 (3 February 2018)

People do not like this movie because it is good- they like it because other people tell them to like it. It is not a good film. It is one of the worst films I have ever had the pleasure of watching. I spent two hours on a pile of trash- I was forced to watch it, really, I never wanted to- but I went ahead anyway, and I'm glad I watched it, because now I can warn you about it. Do not watch this movie.
First of all, the movie is boring. But it's also too exciting at the same time. When I saw this film, I thought it had been made by a crazy person, because there was no plot as far as I could tell. All I saw was a neverending cavalcade of images- men running through the snow, getting bloodied up- shadows and lines and whispering, and big burly bearded pioneers. It was like the anti-violence therapy that Alex gets in A Clockwork Orange. I realized that this was a film that cared more about its visuals than its core message- it spent billions on renting and props and setting and cameras- but spent almost nothing on making the characters likable or having any lines. They could have made it a silent movie- nobody ever talks, except for a few seldom occasions. Some screaming, and a grizzled old pioneer tells a crazy story about a dead chipmunk or something- but that's it. The script mast have been three pages long.
I don't like Leonardo DiCaprio- I had never seen a film with him in it before this one- so I didn't need to be confused about which grizzled old pioneer he was. But I was so confused. All the bearded mountain men looked identical- I couldn't even tell the protagonist from the villain. I didn't even know there was a villain until the very end, when they meet up with each other. I did not know what was going on. All I saw was snow and men and blood. Everything about it was unclear.
It was disgusting- he falls off cliffs, gets eaten by a bear, swims in sub zero water, eats a stomach or something- this is a snuff film, not a historical drama. I do not want to watch a man come near death for two long hours. But even the most action packed scenes did not excite me- strangely, they bored me. I was bored by this movie. It's not a good movie.
It was made by the same stupid idiot as Birdman- I should have guessed- and we can see, in the first scene, that it is made by the same idiot as Birdman. The first scene has a bunch of pioneers stumbling around, setting up camp- and it's all taken in ONE SHOT, and the perspective of the camera sways around the actors, zigzagging- and then they get attacked by some indians, and they run around, and the camera follows them, instead of just staying still- all just in ONE SHOT- and then we get some cuts, which are nice, because I hate that "one shot" business that the guy always gives us. He did it enough in Birdman- he didn't need to do it here.
Also, they added Native Americans in- even though the guy in real life DIDN'T HAVE ANY INDIAN RELATIVES- in fact, the guy who made this movie was criticized for how historically inaccurate it was- how dramatized it was, all in the hopes of getting some more cash from gullible suckers- how much unnecessary violence there was in it- and how he just added some Indians in there to be politically correct. How sad. How sad. There do not need to be any Indians. Not racist, it's just that there shouldn't be any Indians if there WEREN'T any Indians. This film is absolute trash from the gutter. Do not watch it. It is a waste of money.