+ Most Overrated Movie of the Year
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| Leonardo DiCaprio looks fierce on the icy poster for Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu's The Revenant |
The Revenant is the 6th feature from Mexican master filmmaker Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu (Babel (2006)). It is the true story of tough frontiersman Hugh Glass, based on Michael Punke's (Last Stand (2007)) 2002 novel The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge. Iñárritu wrote the script with Mark L. Smith (Vacancy (2007)).
Glass and his halft-Indian teenage son are part of a larger pelt group in the high north, who are attacked by Indians and have to flee without their pelts. But the road back to camp is long, fraught with dangers from outside and within the group.
This sounds like a grade A adventure premise, and yet somehow Iñárritu draws an incredibly long (156 minutes), overly solemn movie from it. What could have become a new The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) ends up a film of extraordinary natural beauty, which any outdoors-man has to admire, but also a film that never actually rivets or compels great identification. It feels a lot like a bunch of great films already seen: Apocalypto (2006), - however without that masterpiece's embrace of its suspenseful adventure genre, - The Thin Red Line (1998), Valhalla Rising (2009) and The Road (2009), (which I didn't love.)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Revolutionary Road (2008)) gives a trooper's performance as Glass, - he has endured painstaking ordeals for The Revenant. Yet his character remains mute for most of the film, while he undergoes nearly superhuman sufferings that almost become comical for me, because I couldn't be farther detached from him than was the case. It is fatal for the film that its success relies on us 'being' Leo. And it is ironic that DiCaprio is Oscar-nominated for his 6th time and might well finally win a statuette for this theatrical, macho-crazed epic, when he has given several much more thoughtful and commanding performances in the past, (for instance his Oscar-nominated turns in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), The Aviator (2004) and especially his frantic portrayal of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).)
Tom Hardy (Warrior (2011)), receiving his first Oscar-nomination for the part, is great as a homicidal psychopath in Revenant, - but we already knew that. Hardy's ability to play violent, unstable men have by now been established to the point where his great performance here as one more also becomes semi-comical to me. (Remember Bronson (2008), Warrior, Lawless (2012), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) or Legend (2015), for instance...?) Revenant suffers from the same overwrought ominousness that plagued Dark Knight Rises.
In a supporting part, Domhnall Gleeson (Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)) gives another impressive performance. This Irish actor is among the most exciting shooting stars at the moment.
Revenant is technically incredible, - especially the battle scene in the beginning, - but it never affected me much. Iñárritu insists on not making the rousing adventure film that seems to be destined in the material, but instead forces another Grand Statement our way with all the didactic solemnity that he figures that requires. I felt like I had seen this film before, - and that the nature in it was its best feature.
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| Iñárritu with DiCaprio on the set of The Revenant |
Box office: 224.9 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[Glass' story was adapted before, in Man in the Wilderness (1971). Development began in 2001. The production went way over budget, (it was supposed to be a 60 mil. $ film) and months over schedule: Filming took from October 2014 - August 2015 in the US, Canada and Argentina. Hardy had to drop out of Suicide Squad (2016) for the film, thereby losing a part as another homicidal maniac I'm sure, (damn!...) It was an exhausting shoot also due to Iñárritu's insisting on shooting only using natural light and chronologically, although Hardy has claimed that this wasn't possible. Several crew members were fired or quit. Revenant had a 39.8 mil. $ first wide weekend in North America, # 2 behind Star Wars VII. It was #1 two weeks later, and was also #1 abroad collectively. It is the top-nominated film for the Oscars in February with 12 nominations. It is likely to become a commercial success within the next couple of months. The Revenant is certified fresh at 82 % with an 8 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of The Revenant?
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