Great direction and effects but nothing original here ...

Rating: 5/10 (12 February 2018)

The original story about Glass as published in The Missouri Trapper ( http://hughglass.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1825-Hugh-Glass-article.pdf ) was far more interesting due to the bleakness of the real events.
This movie would have been richer and more focused if it had dispensed with unnecessary embellishments and stayed closer to the true story.
Instead we get a standard serving of tropes on a very pretty plate: Bad thing happens, abandoned person survives against odds to exact his revenge. The end. Oh, and the scenery is beautiful.
Tom Hardy's bad guy character, Fitzgerald, never had the chance to be raised from a fairly 2-dimensional mumbling racist. The motivations of the Indian chief looking for his daughter was filler and you could cut out all scenes involving this group and the French trappers, and end up with a tighter film.
There were some impressive effects used to create some very long takes - nice sophistication but if you are adding icing to the cake, at least make a nice cake.
Almost every other DiCaprio film is better than this one. Watch this if you really don't have anything else to do for 2.5 hours.