Eye Candy, but Still Meh...

Rating: 7/10 (5 January 2016)

Right off of the bat, I'd like to say that the film has some of the absolute BEST cinematography I've ever seen. I don't know how the producers managed to get so many long-shots in there. There are literally shots that will last 5 minutes without cutting in between. This is especially true at the beginning. If anything, this film should definitely receive tons of praise for its cinematography alone. Hand-in-hand with the cinematography are the visual effects. Next to the Martian, this film has some of the best visual effects that I've seen this year. This is especially true with the bear mauling scene. The bear literally looks real, and the manage to generate drool coming from its mouth and landing on Leo's forehead, however, the bear was never there in the first place. The effects looked gorgeous, and I really enjoyed seeing them on the big screen.
However, despite the great visual effects, and the stellar cinematography, the film just wasn't up to my expectations. When I saw that this film had 4 golden globe awards including best acting, I truly expected to see a breath taking performance from Leonardo DiCaprio, but I was greatly disappointed. Sure he did great job of acting like he was in pain, and acting like he couldn't talk, however, this is nothing that we haven't seen before. Even in low- budget films, we see acting of a similar caliber where people are suffering for their roles. There simply just wasn't enough lines for Leo to peak our interests or to really steal the show. Leo spends most of his time on screen grunting, screaming, and breathing super heavily. I'm sure that any other trained Hollywood actor could pull this off too; his performance was very bland.
The other actors seemed very one-dimensional. There were some great actors in this cast: Tom Hardy, Leo DiCaprio, Domhnall Gleeson, however, I feel like the director spent most of his time on capturing the environment rather than the actors of the film. Throughout the film, I feel like the acting was done in one take. From the beginning with the dispute between Glass and Fitzgerald, to the scene with Fitzgerald and Glass' son. The performances given just seemed so rushed, and I know for a fact the actors can do better.
The director for whatever odd reason liked to put slow-motion in areas that didn't need slow-motion. This is really shown in transitions back into the wild. The running time is 156 minutes, and could have been trimmed down to 140 minutes by getting rid of all of the unnecessary slow-motion. Minute after minute, we see nothing but trees. Trees and the moon. This really doesn't do anything for the audience but remind us that we are in the cold weather. Which was kind of implied anyways.
Overall, the film was visually appealing, but the acting was not great. The talent in this movie was very much skimped for the excellent cinematography and effects. The film was fun to watch, but nothing ground-breaking, and unfortunately for his fans, I don't see Leo getting his Oscar from this film.