A bear, a fish and a horse...

Rating: 4/10 (5 August 2016)

walk into a bar and wreak havoc into DiCaprio's life.
"The Revenant" is a beautiful looking picture, with a moody and detailed atmosphere, nice scenery, dirty looking characters, blood, death and pain. And DiCaprio's Hugh having to go through the last three once, twice, thrice, endless times. Which is the purpose of the movie, but it kind of makes it a torture flick.
The story is simple enough. Hugh is attacked by a bear and left for dead by his team, who is in the run and in disarray after being attacked by natives. Hugh will try to survive by himself, and in his journey will have to confront all kind of situations. And some animals. Lots of animals, actually. And bad weather, snow, blizzards, and lots of people keen on making him disappear from the face of the earth.
It all sounds gritty, dark, violent. And it is. And it is done with detail. It is obvious that lots of work have gone into making the picture as beautiful (in its misery and death) as possible. And all the actors (a basically manly cast) do a great job, with Leo mumbling, grumbling and spitting his way through the two hours and a half the pic lasts.
Nonetheless, the movie is basically an empty beauty, too much in love with itself and way overlong, making Hugh's fight to survive descend into repetition. In the end the movie feels like a dissertation into how to make characters suffer.