Five-Word Review: Visceral, Harshly Beautiful, Overlong Odyssey

Rating: 8/10 (8 February 2016)

It's the 1820s in Frontier USA. Left for dead, and having watched his son die in front of him, Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) begins an epic mission of survival. With Tom Hardy (Legend), 2015's sweetheart Domhnall Gleeson (Ex Machina) and Will Poulter (The Maze Runner), The Revenant is directed by Birdman's Oscar-winning Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarittu.
The Revenant is a truly beautiful film. Having heard the horror stories of one of the most gruelling shoots ever, I was eagerly anticipating it. Particularly admirable, though possibly insane, was the director's decision to shoot in all-natural light, lending the film a stark, realistic feel that really includes the viewer in Glass's struggle. By the end, I felt cold and uncomfortable inside the stuffy cinema: a definite achievement. And talking of uncomfortable, this is one of those films you'd class as hard to watch. Evoking winces, groans, and shape intakes of breath aplenty, the extent of DiCaprio's plight is expertly depicted. Gruesome stand-outs include a scene of sleeping inside a dead horse to avoid the cold (the realistic side of Empire's famous Tauntaun scene), an jaw-dropping bear attack, Glass's final confrontation with Hardy's Fitzgerald, and the opening scene, an extraordinary fight scene between vengeful Native Americans and the fur- trappers Glass belongs to. In the latter Iñarritu gets to display his limitless propensity for tracking shots that he used to great effect in Birdman, with the camera following one person until their death, then following their killer similarly, and so on. Ultimately, a truly spectacular feast for the eyes, with credit to both the director and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, on course for a third consecutive Oscar following Gravity and Birdman.
Further praise must go to the acting. Obviously DiCaprio deserves all the plaudits for a properly fantastic physical performance (though in terms of his greatest career performance one feels The Wolf of Wall Street should come more into play) yet at times he feels almost overshadowed by the fabulous Hardy. Following up a solid year of Mad Max: Fury Road and Kray biopic Legend (tragically unnoticed, like Johnny Depp for Black Mass, by major awards), Hardy gives a perfect villainous performance as the nihilistic, irreverent and self- interested Fitzgerald, even if, like Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men, his accent is thick enough to warrant subtitles. The two central performances, supported by more solid work from Gleeson and the increasingly respectable Poulter, in addition to the wonderful Duane Howard as a Native American searching for his lost daughter, provide the foundations for a properly epic film.
Not that The Revenant is perfect; it's certainly overlong. Yet at the same time it should not have been shorter - in order to achieve the epic feel it had to be too long. There will always be redundant scenes, and watching any man trudge through the wilderness will drag, even with the beauty of the film and the class of acting. However, overall The Revenant is hardly harmed by its flaws, earning its place among the elite of 2015. 86/100 d