"The wind cannot defeat a tree with strong roots."

Rating: 9/10 (25 December 2015)

Taking a look at online news sites,I noticed a story about an "infamous" scene where Leonardo DiCaprio fights a bear in his new film,which led to me getting ready to go bear hunting with DiCaprio. The plot-
1823:
Losing half their men in a surprise attack from the Ree Indians during a hunt for wildlife pelts,the group find themselves being slowed down by experienced hunter Hugh Glass,who along with the attack from the Ree was also badly hurt from a sudden attack from a bear.Wanting someone else to get their hands dirty,the leader of the gang decides to leave Hugh behind with Jim Bridger and his son Hawk Glass who are told that they will be rewarded for killing Hugh.
Doubting the boys,fellow outlaw John Fitzgerald gets the leader to give him permission to stay.Once the rest of the gang have faded away,Fitzgerald starts trying to kill Hugh. Desperately trying to save his dad,Hawk fights back but is killed by Fitzgerald.After killing Hawk,Fitzgerald believes Hugh is minutes from dying,so he decides to leave him for dead.Shaken out of his near- coma like state by seeing the dead body of his son on the ground,Hugh Glass pulls his broken,torn legs off the ground and sets his sights on getting revenge on everyone who left him and his son behind.
View on the film:
Gliding along the battle fields,co-writer/(along with Mark L. Smith) director Alejandro González Iñárritu & cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki immense the viewer in a harrowing world,as tightly coiled tracking shots pick up the sliver of blood dripping out of Glass,with Iñárritu lingering on each aftershock that Glass suffers from every stabbing and bullet wound.Firmly holding on to the belief of filming in real locations and using nothing but completely natural light, (which led to the movie taking months longer than expected to be filmed,with crew members quitting over the delay) Iñárritu shows that all the trouble was worth it by using the natural locations to give the title an extraordinary rustic beauty.
Iñárritu releases the delicacy offered by the location in a precise manner,as lone flickers of light from the trees keeps Glass from sinking into the freezing river and endless blizzard.Finding darkness in the beauty of the location, Iñárritu brilliantly stabs the delicate appearance of the location with a blunt-force documentary intensity,which goes from a breathtakingly brittle bear attack,to the blood of Glass & Fitzgerald splattering against the camera.
Partly adapting Michael Punke's novel,the writers offer a brief glimpse of the wild west sunset by giving Glass's relationship with his son a touching tenderness which haunts the entire film.Pulling the knife out of the "traditional" glamorous aspects of the revenge tale,the writers drive their Western into a decaying Film Noir world,where every step Glass takes for revenge leads to him losing pounds of flesh as his torn apart heart struggles to survive in the dead to the wild wilderness he has been left in.
Pulling the "challenges" he had with Iñárritu onto the screen,Tom Hardy (who during a heated "debate" wrestled with Iñárritu!) gives a chilling performance as John Fitzgerald,whose icy eyes are peeled away by Hardy to reveal a blood-drenched psychopath,with each gruff line Hardy drags out displaying Fitzgerald's complete lack of soul.Taking on the role with a seriousness which led to him eating raw animal meat (despite being vegetarian) and sleeping inside an animal carcass, Leonardo DiCaprio gives an extraordinary performance as Glass,thanks to DiCaprio keeping the memory of Glass's son buried right at the centre of his heart,which stays burning as every other piece of Glass's heart is ripped,chewed and spat out,with DiCaprio making each of Glass's shaky steps hit the ground like concrete,as Glass begins his walk for revenge.