Excellent viewing, visually stunning cinematography, and Leonardo Di Caprio nets himself a long overdue Academy Award.

Rating: 9/10 (19 July 2016)

The Revenant is a movie that puts forward visually stunning cinematography ahead of its excellent storyline that keeps viewers in their seats. Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hardy are brilliant in their respective roles and Alejandro G. Iñárritu has done an amazing job as director.
Set in the 1800's, frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo Di Caprio) acts as a guide for a group of fur trappers led by Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson). They come under attack by a savage group of Indians which sees many of their men killed and the remaining trappers are forced to escape and leave most of the furs they acquired behind. After escaping to safety, the men abandon their boat and work their way back to their outpost Fort Kiowa on foot. During the journey, Hugh Glass is savagely mauled by a bear and left barely clinging for life. One of the fellow trappers John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) abandons Glass and leaves him to die in the wilderness, deceitfully telling the others that they were forced to abandon Glass after supposedly coming under attack. Swearing revenge on Fitzgerald, Glass must dig deep and utilize his survival skills to find his own way back home through the rough winter terrain while avoiding the natives.
Leonardo Di Caprio has gone from strength to strength throughout his career. His pretty boy era with Romeo & Juliet (1996), Titanic (1997) and The Beach (2000) is well and truly behind him. His star power has rapidly inclined with movies such as Catch Me If You Can (2002), The Aviator (2004), Blood Diamond and The Departed (both 2006), and Inception (2010). In my opinion, The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013) should have netted him an Academy Award however he was very unlikely to miss out with Matthew McConaughey instead emerging as the victor for Dallas Buyers Club (2013). Here in The Revenant, Leonardo Di Caprio finally earns himself a long overdue Academy Award as the tormented Hugh Glass.
Tom Hardy who also co-starred with Leonardo Di Caprio in Inception (2010) is another actor who always gets better in every movie he appears in. After audiences sat up and took notice of Tom Hardy in Bronson (2008), Tom Hardy hit the big time and has since gone from strength to strength with movies such as The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). Here in The Revenant, Tom Hardy's performance is nothing short of excellent and he sees himself unlucky not to have won for Best Supporting Actor.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu direction is brilliant but the cinematography is a visually strikingly spectacle and the musical score is powerfully amazing.
The Revenant is one of those excellent movies that you will only have to see once. The violence is brutal and bloody, and the movie goes for at least 156 minutes. Well deserving of its accolades, although it was very unlucky not to have earned the Best Picture Academy Award. Overall The Revenant is well deserving viewing, and Leonardo Di Caprio turns in an award winning performance that sees him deserve every bit of praise coming his way.
9/10.