Hollywood drivel

Rating: 2/10 (21 December 2015)

Only in Hollywood could they take the life of Hugh Glass - a man whose story needs no embellishment to rate as "astonishing" - and subvert it to the point of disgrace. Using the rough outline of the Glass arc, this movie adds absurd and, more vitally, totally unnecessary plot lines about sex slave Indian daughters and martyred, fictional sons and all manner of other rote plot devices in order to - I guess? - try and dramatize a story about a guy who *literally* crawled 200 miles without skin on his back in order to save his own life. As if Hugh needed the posthumous help.
Hardy might win an Oscar for his excellent performance as foil and I'm sure Leo will get plenty of hype for grunting his way through 150 minutes. But man, they're both just shadows cast behind a movie that could have been great.
The writers could have fictionalized a plot loosely based on Glass's life and rightly called it fiction. Or they could have made a great movie about what actually happened and sold it as truth. Instead, they manage go wrong in both directions. "The Revenant" dishonors Hugh Glass, disrespects its audience, and desecrates a tale worth being told much better than this. Your time would be better spent sleeping inside a dead horse.