Great filming, but under-developed character, relationships and theme

Rating: 7/10 (17 January 2016)

To put it simply: I just wasn't that moved by this movie. Didn't really buy into Glass's relationships with his son or his wife, or what made him such a good guy. Didn't understand his motivations basically. Fitzgerald also wasn't as clear-cut a bad guy. This made later events in the movie somewhat anticlimactic. The survival and loneliness and determination were kind of one dimensional and boring.
Revenant has impressive cinematography and depiction of survival but without a compelling story underneath it kind of falls flat. Other survival(ish) type movies (Cast Away, Cold Mountain, Last of the Mohicans, even Lonesome Dove) have done better jobs of developing the characters and relationships before throwing the main character out alone into the lonely survival scenario. This way the audience can understand and share the emotional impact of the main character's suffering and what is behind his will to survive.
When Tom Hanks lives off fish for 4 years with only a volleyball to talk to, or W.P. Inman fends off the aftermath and both sides of the Civil War to hike 400 miles through the back country, or Woodrow Call drags a man's corpse 1500 mi back to Texas for burial, despite how incredible it all is it is all the more moving because it makes sense and we have an understanding of the relationships that exist as the motivational sources. This makes the outcomes climactic and effective as well.
That is what Revenant lacks... It tries to establish a backstory for characters and relationships via flashbacks and dreams while the survival is unfolding. It just doesn't work. The father-son bond is fairly well done but not the ones with the wife or the villain. Glass is willing to freeze and claw through dirt and eat bugs and survive, we get it, but don't really see why. For returning home and getting revenge? As Fitzgerald states himself that alone won't "bring his boy back," so all the suffering is kind of hard to identify with. This problem extends to the theme/message- or lack thereof- for the film as well.