Wake me when the Titanic gets to New York.

Rating: 3/10 (25 December 2015)

First, let me dispense with the good. The scenery is stunning, vivid, real; truly awe inspiring. The scenery is committing a faux pau, by "Chewing the scenery" in this film. Revenant is Inspired by true events, true events that might have been exciting to children in 1890 perhaps. The true story is yawn inspiring. A 19th century fur collector is left for dead by his friends after being eviscerated by a bear, quite reasonably I might add, considering medical technology at the time. The erstwhile appetizer for a bear is outraged that they took his gun and kit, so he crawls back to the fort and confronts his former friends and gets his gun back. No one dies, until a decade later the Indians finish off where the bear left off. End of story. How exciting, says my 95 year old Grandfather, who considered watching paint peel entertainment in 1927.
Well.... Hollywood has to spice the story up and make it something more worthy of Leonardo and Tom. After all both men can and have done solid work, so certainly they need the plot to have a little more vim and verve to it. How do you do it? It's tough.... after all in real life the only homicidal actor in the whole event was the damn bear. So Hollywood gives Leonardo a son who tags along on his Dad's fur trapping adventure. Better yet Hollywood lets Tom Hardy eviscerate said son far more effectively than the bear could Leonardo and as a cherry on top, let's the helplessly wounded Leonardo watch his son die hard. There you have it. Leonardo now has the will to live, if only to treat Tom Hardy to the feast of wounds the bear subjected him to. Thus begins a two hour epic journey of revenge that leaves you wishing that the bear and Indians had just killed all the actors at the beginning of the film. The only truth in the whole movie is spewed by Hardy as he dies, when he grimly tells Leonardo that killing him won't bring his son back, nor alas our wasted three hours.
In the end I am glad they spiced up the historical events, because as I said from the start, said historical events were boring and needed some steroids. However, it's a one dimensional movie dominated by the scenery and the facial expressions Leonardo and Tom make throughout the film. We needed more bear....