Movie Review: The Revenant

4 stars out of 5

For three weeks, I trudged through the snow, relying only on my wits. Would I emerge victorious, or was I merely delaying the inevitable? Finally — a broken man — I succumbed to my fate: I bought a ticket to The Revenant.

Hey, you know what? It was really good! Remember how there was a whole lot going on in Alejandro Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)? There was even a whole lot going on in the title! This time, director/co-writer Iñárritu strips things down to to the bare essentials (and essential bears): a gripping tale of survival and revenge.

It’s a little like The Martian, except much better. Dude gets left behind by his crew in a harsh environment and has to fend for himself. We’re out on the frontier in the 1820s with fur traders and Indians and there are Frenchies wandering around too. Our old pal Leonardo DiCaprio is the abandoned Mr. Glass but he ain’t fragile: For more than 127 hours, he battles grizzlies and the elements and hunger and busted legs and a raging river, etc. etc. (Meanwhile, I can’t even sew a button back on a shirt.) Maybe he’s a Jedi: Glass borrows a survival trick from Empire Strikes Back, and receives guidance from a ghost. They don’t delve into the psychological impact of his forced solitude; when every moment is life or death, you don’t really have time to befriend a volleyball.

Leo doesn’t spend the entire 156 minutes of The Revenant alone, however. There’s also Tom Hardy as the bad guy Fitzgerald, and he actually gets to speak coherently in this movie, albeit with a Texan accent. (Maybe the much more taciturn DiCaprio consulted Hardy for grunting lessons.) Domhnall “I’m in Everything” Gleeson is in this (duh), and what a diverse 2015 he had: soft-spoken everynerd in Ex Machina, Nazi-esque nasty in The Force Awakens, and a principled captain in this one.

And DiCaprio continues to impress with his versatility as well. He’s been equally convincing as Howard Hughes, J. Edgar Hoover, Jay Gatsby, etc., and now this sad bearded fellow who never says die. (Or says much of anything, for that matter.) Sure, the physical demands of the role are impressive, but Leo adds layers of humanity (and then a dab of Eastwood later in the flick). I would not be averse to him winning Best Actor; was definitely better than the other guys I saw, Cranston and Damon.

And just as Leo isn’t only a frontiersman in this, The Revenant isn’t simply an action movie. Glass makes us consider the bonds of family and tradition. The Fitzgerald character brings cold self-interest into the mix. Racism, random kindness, doing the right thing or failing to because you’re following orders — all provide additional grist for the mill.

Oh, but The Revenant certainly is an action movie: arrows and guns and knives and axes and bears and horses and fights and chases and falls, all against a jawdroppingly beautiful backdrop. Man, that Ultra Panavision 70 was wasted on The Hateful Eight; they’ve should’ve used it here! Nevertheless, Iñárritu expertly lights and shoots everything, with an unobtrusive but effective score (and even a touch of Birdman drums as the thrills heats up). Yes it’s long but didn’t feel especially so; we’ve got a lot of land to traverse and Iñárritu puts us right in the middle of it — there’s even blood on the camera lens. Now that’s dedication!