The Revenant (2015)
Adventure, Thriller, Western
Directed By: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
After a group of frontiersman on a fur trade expedition are attacked by a band of natives they are forced to end their work early. Sacrificing much of the payload they are forced onto land to find their way home as the natives will not stop tracking them until they are off their land. WHat is already a seemingly impossible task is made even more difficult when their guide, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is attacked by a wild Grizzly. Despite surviving the attack, Glass is eventually left for dead by members of his own crew, but not until one of them kills his son first. With revenge being the only thing on his mind he traverses the frozen landscape to track and kill the men who did him wrong.
Inarritu takes the classic revenge story to a whole new level with this film giving us a new idea of what a human is capable of when blood is the only thing on the mind. The film is incredibly brutal and never lets up for a second, so much so that it leaves you feeling uncomfortable throughout much of the nearly three hour runtime. You get what these guys were going through because, if you have kept up with the story of this film, you know that the actors and crew were out in this Hell everyday to create this movie, it wasn't made in some warehouse in Hollywood. The only major thing that isn't done practically is the bear attack, and oh boy is that viscously beautiful.
I mentioned before that this film was shot almost entirely with natural light (I have read that a few of the nighttime campfire scenes needed a small amount of lighting to actually work) which is nearly impossible. That is until Emmanuel Lubezki decided to give it a try and ultimately succeed better than anyone could have ever imagined. This cinematographer has already won two Oscars for his work on Gravity and Inarritu's last film Birdman and the work he did with those left us wondering how he could reach any higher, until he did this. His work in The Revenant is some of the best cinematography we've seen in the modern century and is the exact reason this film needs to be seen in a theater.
As much spectacle as this film is it would still be nothing without the level of acting present within the frames. Leo has been talked about for the past two months for the insane work he did with this. We've all heard how he ate raw bison liver and nearly got frostbite, but until you actually see why he went through all of that you don't understand the work he really did. This may finally be his Oscar role and deservedly so, but I don't think he is the standout of this film regardless of how much screen time he has. It was Tom Hardy who left me the most dazzled at the end of this movie, what he does as the savage who leaves Glass for dead is incredible. His character is the entire reason we see what we do in this movie and he totally owns the part creating one of the most vile and despicable bad guys in a long time.
This is one of the few films to properly convey what it was truly like for the men exploring the western frontier, it gave us real insight to the brutality of the times and how quickly life could be taken away from you. Ironically this brutality is what has turned some off to this film and much like with The Hateful Eight, they are missing the point. This isn't a film that revels in death and violence, it is a film that aims to give you as close to a real depiction of that period in time as possible. What Inarritu and Lubezki have done with this film is nothing short of spectacular and is more than deserving of the price of admission. Check this one out before it leaves the big screen.
As always, thanks for reading and I am Zach Who Watches Movies. You can find me anytime on twitter @ZachWWMovies, smell ya later!
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