The film follows John Glass, an experienced explorer who is mauled half to death by a bear and is then left for dead when his injuries become too much of a hinderance for the rest of his groups survival. On top of this Glass is brutally betrayed by one of his own men, played by mumbling Tom Hardy, who murders his son before attempting to bury him alive. From here, DiCaprio forces himself through sheer will and determination to make it back to camp and seek revenge for the death of his son.
The first thing that needs to be said about this movie is that it is beautiful, it’s harsh and unforgiving, but it is beautifully shot and executed. The director of Birdman, Alejandro González Iñárritu, has used every visual trick in the book, along with filming exclusively with only natural lighting to create a visceral and harsh terrain for our characters that really brings realism to the forefront of the film. Once again he uses long tracking shots to bring us closer to the characters and their surroundings and at times you’ll be wondering when you saw the last cut between shots. Trust me, there are going to be some hard things to watch in this movie, mostly because it all looks so real but it’s also one of the main reasons to see this on the big screen.
But let’s get to the performances: Leonardo DiCaprio goes full Bear Grylls in this movie, AND YOU NEVER GO FULL BEAR GRYLLS - but let’s face it, if anyone’s going to do, it should be Leonardo DiCaprio. This is a guy who has been seeking Oscar glory for his whole career, and still hasn’t achieved this, but you can see the pain in his face as he gives it his all in this film. Not only is he doing the intense DiCaprio thing, but he also the only actor this Oscar season who has eaten raw fish from a river raw moose liver for our entertainment - the only thing missing was him drinking his own pee. So Academy, if you listening, please give him the Oscar, because I’d hate to see what he does next for our approval.
Of course it’s not all about DiCaprio in this film. There are some great performances from Will Poulter, a cast of really intense looking Indian characters and probably cinemas most valuable player of 2015, Domhnall Gleeson, but the other big star is Tom Hardy. Yes, after playing mumbling Mad Max, and the charming and scary Kray twins, we have Hardy returning to his mumbling best as the villain of the piece John Fitzgerald. Don’t get me wrong, his performance is brutal and intense but also incredibly hard to understand as, much like in the film Lawless, he has opted to deliver all his lines mid-mumble. So essentially for the majority of the film DiCaprio is unable to talk so is reliant on communicating in only grunts and groans, add to this Tom Hardy once again doing an intense mumbling, hard to decipher performance and you easily have a contender for best foreign language film.
Overall, this movie is brutal as f*ck. Really that should be the whole review but there’s a whole lot more to talk about. But honestly, do yourself a favour and see this on the big screen if for no other reason than to see the brutal Saving Private Ryan-style opening scene.
The Revenant gets Four and a Half out of Five Stars (or Four and a Half out of Five DiCaprio getting f*cked by a bear dream sequences...)
No comments:
Post a Comment