DiCaprio's greatest performance rivaling The Great Gatsby.

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2016)

In 1971 I sat at the edge of my chair and watched in horror as actor Richard Harris struggled to climb a tree while a grizzly bear viciously tore at him and pulled him down. Such was the early scene in the western film, Man in the Wilderness... and I never forgot it because it was so very real. Now, we have a re-creation of that scene with no tree, but so disgustingly real that it is a masterpiece of creativity and ingenuity all by itself! I strongly recommend that you go see this movie, even if its only because the special effects in the first 15:minutes are crafted by computer geniuses. Now, if you are the type of person who cannot separate movie scenes from reality and are haunted at night by flashbacks of the violent scenes then by all means stay home! But then, let's get real...it is a fact that the European settlers have been attacked by bears and also by American Indians...and of course the settlers also attacked them. This is just history. The Revenant may be a very unusual story about survival in the midst of improbable odds but it certainly is not an impossibility. So, did it actually happen? I believe that portions are based on facts...perhaps not all of these unusual circumstances belong to the same individual, but likely were each experienced by one or more people during the 1700s. I am convinced that Dicaprio's performance deserves an Oscar, if for no other reason, because of the emotional challenges he was faced with in portraying the character that this film is based upon. I rated this film a ten, although it does slow down a bit upon approaching a predictable ending.