Hollywood ruined a good story

Rating: 3/10 (10 January 2016)

*** This review contains spoilers****
I'll start by saying my review may have been more positive had I not read the book first. Before getting to the movie itself, the acting was good, although I think Tom Hardy outperformed Leonardo DiCaprio.
After reading the book I was excited to see the movie, but ended up pretty much hating the film and Hollywood for it's typical over- embellishment and to-be-expected shame on you USA finger-wagging. Hollywood apparently thinks there are no bounds to literary license. Apparently for the screenwriter and director, surviving a grizzly attack in the middle of nowhere in the early 1800s and then setting out to avenge oneself isn't a compelling enough story, so they felt the need to leave the world of reality and add things that will make you scratch your head and say "why?" and "impossible." First things first, the attack happened on Sept. 1st, but the movie was set in the dead of winter. There is no way Glass would have survived in those temperatures and then to further insult our intelligence they kept tossing him into a freezing river to keep him wet and freezing, yet not an inkling of frostbite to mar Leonardo's pretty face. Also, the bear nearly removed his scalp, but that wouldn't do for our handsome star, instead they removed half of Fitzgerald's (Hardy's) scalp and kept Leonardo looking good. Why set this movie in the dead of winter, which would have made it impossible for Glass to survive? Also, it's not enough to survive a grizzly attack and this change of seasons, let's throw him off a 100+ ft cliff with a pine tree breaking his fall, just because the stupid audience wouldn't find the story compelling enough otherwise. That didn't happen in the book. Also, Glass never married in real life, so why add an Indian wife and son? Again, because the stupid audience wouldn't find his quest for vengeance compelling enough without Hollywood adding a fictional son to be stabbed to death by Fitzgerald right in front of Glass' face? And those awful images of his wife constantly being thrust upon us to draw us into the movie more emotionally again because the truth just wasn't' enough?
Now for the Hollywood sermon you had to foresee about the evil white man stealing the land and animals from the Indians – sermon provided by a chief who didn't appear in the book; and to make the white man look more evil and the Indians more victimized, Hollywood thought "Let's add a part where the whites steal the chief's daughter and use her for a sex slave to justify all of the atrocities committed by the Indians." Seriously?! And that's not enough! Let's make Leonardo look even better by having him, while still recovering from a grizzly attack, rescue the Indian girl from the French trappers and escape completely unharmed. The movie is basically a complete work of fiction and should stop claiming to be based on a true story and should have changed the name of the move so there was no confusing it with the book. Why not also change Hugh Glass's name to something more masculine like Dirk Hammer and cast him as a trans-gendered male. That would be compelling right? They even took events that happened to Glass and made them happen to Fitzgerald and Bridger, like wandering through the burned out village and feeding the Indian woman.
They painted Hugh Glass as an experienced scout, again let's build up our Hollywood star, when he wasn't at the time of the attack. Captain Henry was the only one on the expedition who have ever navigated that far west before, yet they build that into Glass's character and have Henry exclaim, "Glass knows this land better than all of us put together." And at the end, instead of Glass kicking the crap out of Bridger, they have Capt. Henry do the butt-kicking while painting Glass as the compassionate and forgiving one. They also change the ending. Glass never killed Fitzgerald, but he basically does in the movie, He takes Fitzgerald to the brink of death (he would have bled out within 10 min) and then stops when he remembers an Indian friend telling him that vengeance is God's, so Glass doesn't finish him off, instead choosing to dump him in the river to allow the "fictional" Indian chief who's watching 100 feet downstream do the honors. Why? Does that absolve Glass of the murder and make him more honorable? I don't get it.
The overall worst directing blunder was to set the movie in the dead of winter. Only ignorant Hollywood types who have never experienced a cold winter would think it would be possible for a human to survive the extreme temperatures, often while wet, with little to no fire and for months, not a day or two. In the movie, Glass should have been dead from the cold before Fitzgerald and Bridger ever left him. Hollywood ruined a great story by ridiculously and unbelievably enhancing it to use as a vehicle for a Leonardo DiCaprio Oscar run. And then there goes Tom Hardy outshining him. What a shame. Skip the movie and read the book. Stupid, ignorant, preachy, Hollywood!