Defeated by ambivalence

Rating: 6/10 (27 January 2016)

"The Revenant" is a movie that did so much correctly. Thanks to the superb work of director Alejandro Inarritu and the cast and crew, the movie is full of flawless cinematography, sound editing, acting, directing, and visuals. The characters are not interchangeable and all of their motivations make sense. By all accounts, this should be a great movie. There is, however, something weighing it down.
After being mauled by a bear, frontier man Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is left under the care of three others while the rest of his team makes it back to their fort. One member of the team, Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) kills Glass' son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), and leaves Glass for dead, fleeing back to the fort. Hellbent on revenge, Glass travels across the dangerous wilderness back towards the fort to find Fitzgerald.
Glass' motivation for wanting revenge makes sense: Fitzgerald killed his son and left him for dead, though Glass seems to not care as much about the being left for dead part. The problem is that the entire situation just makes you ambivalent to Glass' struggle. Fitzgerald only killed Hawk after he was making noise and Fitzgerald couldn't get him to quiet down. He was also in the middle of dangerous territory and bringing the wounded Glass along was most likely suicide. He is clearly a bad person, but based on the circumstances, his clear life picture, and the time period that the movie takes place in, it can be viewed as less evil and more of survival instinct.
As you can make these defenses to Fitzgerald, when Glass goes after him, your only reason to actually care is because Glass is the protagonist. I personally found myself not caring if Glass got his revenge or not. Since the lust for revenge is what pilots the movie, it ends up feeling long and boring because you can't connect with any of the characters.
"The Revenant" has a lot of flawless qualities to it. Getting you to care about the story is not one of them.