Unoriginal, Derivative Rehash Of Multiple Similar Films

Rating: 3/10 (16 February 2016)

PROS
1. The film is technically brilliant. There are numerous stunning, very complex sequences that made me wonder how they pulled it off, with ambitious use of cranes and jibs. Much of the camera-work is mindblowing. There's a Native Indian attack on the hunting party near the start that appears to be shot in one long take without any edits and it's incredible to watch, Indians are shot and fall from trees, arrows are shot through people's necks, people fall from horses, there are knife-fights, gun-fights, and it's all shot in one long take that goes on for ten minutes. Of course there ARE edits, but they are cleverly masked, I think during the various whip pans. This sequence - for it's ambition, scale and scope - is almost on a par with the opening of Saving Private Ryan. The grizzly bear attack on DiCaprio is technically amazing too. Incredibly realistic.
2. The Native Indians are portrayed in an interesting and fresh way. They are shown to be intelligent, dynamic people. The performance by the elderly Arikara chief is especially powerful.
3. There's an interesting interplay between the various ethnic groups in this film. The French are portrayed as drunken, racist, corrupt rapists. The American frontiersmen are a strange assortment of Irish-American looking people with ginger hair, a few black people and a cockney - similar to the type of demographic mixture you see on a pirate ship, or the crew of an old sailing ship - or like the ship in King Kong for example - it's almost the exact same demographic mixture as those guys on the ship in King Kong, And Prometheus. And The Force Awakens. And Spectre. I guess it's a demographic reflection of the film's intended audience.
CONS
1. The film becomes more contrived as it goes along. The film is about DiCaprio overcoming one implausible challenge after another. He's attacked by Indians - but survives, he's mauled by a grizzly bear for 5 minutes - but survives, the French find and hang from a tree DiCaprio's Pawnee companion but fail to spot DiCaprio - who's camping in a big tent just a few meters away. He falls over a cliff on his horse - but survives (the horse dies), he's washed downriver in the rapids and is heading towards a 300M drop but at the last moment inexplicably steers himself into a tranquil off-shoot river and survives. He also nearly freezes, starves and bleeds to death but always pulls-through at the very last moment. DiCaprio faces death every 10 minutes yet survives the most ludicrous injuries and accidents - meanwhile everyone around him dies in a flash.
2. There are annoying and pretentious dream-sequences depicting DiCaprio's Native Indian wife and son before they get killed. DiCaprio experiences continual dream-sequences / flashbacks depicting his loving wife watching over him from the afterworld which are impossible to relate to because his wife and son are just ciphers who have very little screen-time so we never get the opportunity to develop feelings for them like we do for DiCaprio and to a lesser extent with some of the other characters such as the friendly Pawnee Indian and the elderly Arikara chief.
3. Much more could have been made of Native Indian mysticism. The imagery in the film tried so hard to be mystical and profound but it just came across as hackneyed and derivative.
4. Tom Hardy keeps letting people go - he's on the verge of killing someone then he let's them go for no reason other than to allow the story to continue. So he's got loads of witnesses to his crimes running around the wilderness and he goes back to the fort where he can get arrested and be testified against by the multiple witnesses he allowed to go free. This is one of the more blatant flaws that ruins the film.
5. Tom Hardy is horribly miscast in this film - he's not menacing or depraved enough for the role, he delivers his dialogue in a mumbling Texan drawl that's barely understandable - you can't understand 95% of what he says. His performance is comical, cartoonish and overacted. I would have cast an actor 10-15 years older than Tom Hardy - Tom Hardy is too similar in looks and demeanour to DiCaprio to provide an engaging foil.
6. Bizarrely - whilst much care and attention has been paid to the outstanding cinematography and direction (the blocking in some of the long, complex one-take scenes is jaw-dropping) there appears to be massive technical errors on the soundtrack. I noticed Tom Hardy's dialogue was out of sync a couple of times.
IN SUMMARY
The director - Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu - pulls off massive technical ambition perfectly, but maybe because of this, the film feels artificial and contrived. As the movie progressed I started to get the terrible feeling that I had seen it all before - and I had! He's copied the story - I've seen this story so many times before: Badlands, Deliverance, Southern Comfort, The Proposition, the recent film about wolves with Liam Neeson - all remarkably similar in theme, tone. The Proposition seared itself into my memory because it dared to be different and dared to be new and it succeeded in doing that. These qualities are missing in The Revenant, it's a rehash of a rehash. There's no substance to it, and absolutely no soul. Everything is pinned on the fancy camera-work and clever digital effects - but beyond that - there's nothing there. I'm sorry to say this - but I can only give The Revenant 3/10.