Great photography, not so great film

Rating: 3/10 (16 January 2016)

You are almost immediately plunged into the action, in a similar way to the opening of 'Saving Private Ryan', with a Native American attack on a group of fur trappers. DiCaprio even does that momentarily deaf thing that Tom Hanks does. Lots of bows and arrows and gore and excellent photography that is really immersive. Great opening scene.
There there's the scene where DiCaprio is mauled by a grizzly bear. Again, really believable, exciting and up front and personal - you can almost smell the bear's stinking breath. Brilliant.
And then there's ... well ... not much really. Photography and scenery are by and large excellent but you do get the feeling that better use could have been made of them. Iñárritu often seems to chop scenes around for no particular reason, although you do get the occasional sense of the vast wilderness that comes over well on the big screen.
Dialogue is scarce. Most of it goes to Tom Hardy who tries to put on a Texan accent but succeeds in sounding as if he has a sock in his mouth (does he specialise in being inaudible? remember him as the mumbling Bane in 'The Dark Knight Rises'?).
Then there's the storyline. You know the ending, right? (Just look up the definition of 'revenant'.) Leo is up against it and he suffers a great deal. But you know he is going to survive. So when, to top everything, he falls off a cliff on his horse you realise he's actually become Mr Indestructible. And two and a half hours of crawling, grimacing and wincing does not a very entertaining film make.
There are also several non-credible plot twists. Like when Tom Hardy (a.k.a. The Mumbler) somehow cracks an impressive-looking safe and makes off with the garrison money and just two guys go after him, including the garrison commander. This nicely sets up the final confrontation between Mr Indestructible and The Mumbler .... but really?
We also develop little or no emotional connection with the main character. The silent dream scenes are a clichéd way of trying to do this and they don't work in my opinion - they're just puzzling and boring. Nor do we see much of the relationship between Leo and his son to set up the emotional links between them - just Leo being harsh and dishing out tough love a couple of times.
The pacing is also poor. Once you've passed the opening scene and the grizzly scene, feel free to go and refresh your popcorn - you won't miss much.
Overall, the film is self-consciously bleak and overdetermined and is unevenly paced. A better director might possibly have made this a good film but Iñárritu is clearly not David Lean.
If DiCaprio gets an Oscar for this it will be because the Academy think they owe him one and possibly because of the hype. This is a film that will be forgotten. If you want to see a good silent movie with snow, ice, struggle for survival and even the odd grizzly bear thrown in, watch Chaplin's 'The Gold Rush' - it's far more entertaining.