Great Acting and Visuals

Rating: 9/10 (8 January 2016)

This film seems unlike any revenge film to come before this one. It is incredibly well-shot, it is brutal and intense, well-acted, and it takes place in the early days of America when Native Americans and Caucasians didn't get along so well. Tension between these two very broad groups is what drives the action in the film's opening sequence, and it is a motif throughout the film.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a man who raised a young Native American named Hawk on his own after the boy's parents either abandoned him or died in a battle. Glass fights a bear and miraculously survives to be buried alive by Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) who wants to cash in on this "service" since he has somewhat of a feud with Glass and does not want to see him live. It is unclear whether Glass is okay with this since he technically "makes a deal" with Fitzgerald, but Glass gains the will to fight for survival once he realizes Hawk was killed by Fitzgerald.
A huge chunk of the film is devoted to following Glass' journey to return to his community, and this proves to be visually beautiful, but also causes the film to feel slow at points. There are incredible shots of Glass in relation to the land around him, which proves to show scenery and landscapes in a poetic manner. One impressive shot is a tracking shot which moves from an extreme wide shot which focuses on the mountains with Glass as tiny as an ant in the distance and eventually moves to a close-up on the same character. There are many long takes in the film that are executed brilliantly, some during action sequences and some when Glass is simply walking on his journey. However, as the story follows Glass on his journey, some of the scenic shots go on too long and seem monotonous since we understand that Glass has to go a long way, but the film keeps reminding us this with more and more scenic shots that don't move the story along.
DiCaprio is at his best here, and will probably receive his fifth Oscar nomination for acting. Whether or not he will actually win the award as fans often complain about, his performance in The Revenant will live on in history. Glass' desperation comes across very convincingly even though DiCaprio does not even need to speak throughout a lot of the movie. That's the real acting - when actors can express emotions and motivation clearly through body language rather than how they handle dialogue.
Every action sequence in this movie is incredible. Most are done in just a few long takes which means these sequences needed to be really well-choreographed in order to get the shots right. And these sequences were on location rather than in a studio, so one has to respect the direction and the cinematography that was done with amazing effort outside in cold environments.
If there is one thing to take away from The Revenant it is the visuals. It's funny that not many movies are done this way today even though filmmakers know that film is a very visual medium. Innaritu understands this very well as we can see in Birdman as well as in this movie, and hopefully he inspires the next generation of filmmakers to follow in his footsteps.
3.5/4.0