The Revenant is yet another show stolen by Tom Hardy. Considered a 2015 release for awards reasons, this is his fourth major movie of the year — and his fifth lead role. As overrated as I find him, he just keeps ending up delivering the best performance in a given movie. Photos courtesy 20th Century Fox.
And for his followup to last year’s Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and should-have-been Best Actor winner, the astounding Birdman, acclaimed director Alejandro G. Iñárritu takes his crew to the northern edges of the world in the Western Canadian wilds to bring the viewer what feels like two and a half hours of Leonardo DiCaprio limping.
The semi-true story of The Revenant kicks off with a fur trapping company in the northern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase, for which Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) serves as navigator, being ambushed by local Arikara American Indians. The company is forced to retreat on foot with decimated numbers. Glass, foraging for food, is raped mauled by a grizzly bear. After realizing he can’t be carried all the way to safety, John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), along with Glass’ son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), stay back to protect him until help arrives or bury him if he passes. Instead, Fitzgerald murders Hawk and leaves Glass in a shallow grave. Now a creature of pure vengeance, Glass digs himself free and crawls on his belly, wounds still festering, across the frozen wasteland to claim his revenge.
The Revenant was a daring film to produce and deserves all sorts of credit for the difficulty Iñárritu went through to bring it to the screen. Shooting took nine months. Cast and crew had a several-hour daily commute to shooting locations because they were so far from civilization, and when they got there, it was only to shoot for an hour or two at most. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki wanted to use natural lighting and create a 100 percent CGI-free movie. As close to the Arctic Circle as they were, that meant they only had a small window every day when the lighting was right to shoot. This script had been floating around since as early as 2001 because no one was willing to tackle the challenges it presented. This was a truly ambitious undertaking, and they pulled it off. There were some hitches, to say the least, but the fact that filming was completed or even attempted is itself an impressive thing. Ultimately, the film is crushed not under the weight of its ambition, but by poor pre- and post-production decisions.
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