Hold on, I'm having a heart attack from the intensity here...

Rating: 9/10 (9 January 2016)

"The Revenant": Do you want to encompass that feeling of surviving some of the most intense circumstances that could happen to a human being? Well then, I give you "The Revenant"! I just saw two films about survival; one was legitimately great and the other wasn't, this here is hands down is the great one. Set back in the 1820s when a man, Hugh Glass, is left for dead in the wilderness to fend off against wildlife, ravaging natives and pillagers on his journey to seek vengeance against John Fitzgerald; the person responsible for the wrongs that were dealt to him.
This was an obvious passion project for director Alejandro Inarritu, the cinematography is some of the best that I've seen this year or even in the last few years. I would even say that the camera work done in this movie puts some parts of his last film, "Birdman", to shame. This was really something to admire for the effort put into the technical aspects alone. There were moments where I couldn't believe they captured what they did on location with using all natural lighting instead of studio enhancement, which was a giant risk that completely paid off. And any times there was CGI implemented was flawless; all the effects in this film were done with a lot of perfectionism because I could never tell I was watching a film, I saw a man struggling for dear life to make it out alive in a series of awful situations. So many times I kept trying to figure out how they did what they did on the screen, but immediately dropped it because I just wanted this guy to stop getting attacked before I had a stroke from the stress.
Leonardo DiCaprioman, if you don't finally get an Oscar for the grueling process that you must have gone through for this then something is clearly wrong going on there! He did a crazy good job in this film, I won't say this is my favorite role of his, but out of all his performances this is probably the hardest work he's done and it definitely shows on screen. The whole time I was biting my nails hoping that he lives, each and every time something goes south. I could have probably used a bit more comradery between his character Glass and his son, but as it is I thought it worked well for his character to not be so easy to relax. Tom Hardy also does a good job as Fitzgerald; at this point, I'm not fully sure as to where he is even from anymore. Within the same year I've heard him have an Australian accent, two separate British accents, and now a southern/Texas accent. He's always a joy to watch and from the start, you just know that this dude is a bit messed up in the head. When he goes into detail as to whyyou get it. It's always interesting to see what Hardy does next and how adaptable of an actor he can be with 5 different roles in a single year to come out, all totally different going from one to the next. He can be the perfect hero, or in this, the perfect villain. And the climax between DiCaprio and Hardy is at least a heart attack and a half. There is no choreography going on here, it is two men getting down and dirty to kill the other. It is brutal to watch and I couldn't look away for a second, just kept yelling out "OUCH"!
Now if I have any gripes or criticisms about the film, I'd say that it does drag slightly during the second act and probably could have been cut down a tad. There were some gratuitous shots of trees a number of times as well as some voice overs that could have probably been left out. As it is though, this was still quite the ride. It will end up probably in my top ten of the year, but there are still a number of others that I still have to see first. If this plays near you then I recommend seeing this if what I've said sounds like your cup of tea, it's without a doubt worth the sit.