Meticulously crafted, physically draining

Rating: 7/10 (25 January 2016)

First things first: The Revenant looks absolutely gorgeous, no doubt about that! The fact that it is shot entirely on location with natural lighting paid off in spades, as you'd be hard-pressed to find a film as visually striking as this one, that also feels so gritty and brutal at the same time. The action scenes are riveting and masterfully directed, with the camera seamlessly flowing from one shot to the next, often leaving you amazed and wondering how they pulled it off. That being said, there are a few times where CGI had to be used and even though it did not look in any way bad, the fact that the rest of the film looks so incredibly real, made those moments stick out a little more than they otherwise would.
However, for all its amazing achievements in cinematography and direction, it is far from perfect. I felt that it would have greatly benefited from a shorter running time, as its excessive use of landscape shots often brought an already slow paced film to a crawl. The story isn't anything special; a pretty straightforward tale of survival and revenge with some spiritual self-discovery thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, character development was minimal and I wasn't as emotionally invested as I thought I should have been.
DiCaprio's performance was compelling as usual even though some of the more extreme situations his character manages to survive stretched my suspension of disbelief a few times. Tom Hardy also gave a noteworthy performance and the interactions between the two throughout the film felt appropriately tense.
Overall, while it falls short of greatness and requires some patience, it's still worth seeing at least once for the cinematography alone.