He's no Birdman

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2016)

The Revenant is certainly a beautiful movie, worth seeing on the big screen, but probably only once. It's entertaining, but not in a repeatable way. I can't imagine people wanting to see this movie multiple times because it's just so goddamn brutal and punishing.
The movie opens with a gruesome and intense battle that rivals Saving Private Ryan and its depiction of D-Day. And just when you think you're safe to take a few swigs from your flask, our "hero" gets mauled (not raped) by a female bear protecting her cubs. The scene is supposedly a very accurate depiction of being mauled by a bear. That's nice, about as nice as ordering an appetizer of four fried wontons and getting five.
The good captain inexplicably leaves our hero behind with the one man who has consistently expressed his racist hatred for our hero's son, and who has consistently expressed his belief that our hero should be put out of his misery like a horse with a broken ankle.
I was reminded of a few other movies: Jeremiah Johnson, with its holy-hell vengeance; Antichrist, with its slow brutality in the woods; Ravenous, for the lovely scenes of eating raw meat; and Papillion, for its fabulist mythology.
We get a lot of grunting and crawling, an occasional slice of the supernatural, brutal amoral greed, and a search for tenderness in a world that just doesn't give a damn. For anyone wondering why people chose to live in the wilderness in such terrible conditions, just watch The Revenant.