DiCaprio CAN act when he wants to

Rating: 7/10 (14 July 2019)

One of the worst bits of acting I ever saw was DiCaprio as King Louis Quatorze in "The Man in the Iron Mask." But then, one of the better bits of acting I have seen was DiCaprio as a man who gets mauled by a bear, watches his son get killed, falls off a cliff with his horse and then has to use the animal as a bivouac ... and so forth. Only reality can bring on such a series of life- and sanity-threatening events, and yet a human being is strong enough to survive and make it back to civilization, such as it is.
The film tries to be ultra-realistic with settings, costuming, and language, and it mostly succeeds very well. The generally excellent camerawork is marred by a few strange choices. For example, when characters are breathing heavily in the cold, there is condensation on the camera lens (more likely, on a glass plate held in front of the camera!). If this is to elicit a 'documentary feel,' well, that would work if the movie were set in 1933, when Technicolor film cameras existed, but not in 1823. Pretending there was a camera catching real life in 1823 actually has the opposite effect: it takes you out of the story thinking what I just said above, and that diminishes the experience of the film.
Not perfect in all respects, but very worth seeing for those who can handle harsh violence, scalping, (simulated) distress and death of animals, and so forth.