Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9.5/10
Cast: Leonardo diCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck, Paul Anderson, Kristoffer Joner, Joshua Burge, Duane Howard, Melaw Nakehk’o, Fabrice Adde, Arthur Redcloud, Christopher Rosamond, Robert Moloney, Lukas Haas, Brendan Fletcher, Tyson Wood, McCaleb Burnett, Emmanuel Bilodeau, Grace Dove, Chesley Wilson.
There are extraordinary feats of human endeavour that you just have to marvel at, lessons from people in the past to how they conducted themselves under severe pressure and extremes and how perhaps as young infants of the 21st Century we have lost that natural affinity to stretch ourselves against such adversity.
For the Pioneers who carved out what was to become modern America and those who eventually took the lands that belonged to the different tribes of Native Americans, life was harsh, cruel and at times downright savage, kill or be killed, hunt or be hunted and nature and man both had the smell of blood flaring in their nostrils.
Epic is too small a word to describe the backdrop, life or the film that Leonardo diCaprio, Tom Hardy and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu brings to the cinema screen in The Revenant. Epic may as well be relegated to the confines of history, a byword for motion pictures past, for how can a film built on this type of realistic scale be anything less, how can the fury and anger that drove 19th Century fur trapper Hugh Glass onwards after being left to die in the wilderness after a bear attack be just left as unfeeling and devoid of emotion that a single word insists upon.
The Revenant sees Mr. DiCaprio take on arguably the most demanding role of his life, a part of absolute command and expectancy in which he never fails for a single minute to captivate and enthral as the revenge driven Hugh Glass. The sheer agony of watching him trying to survive against all the odds, against nature, against the savagery of a bear attack, against the legends that the Arikara tribe were known for and the extreme cold that would have taken down an ordinary man at that time, all make this easily Mr. diCaprio’s finest moment on screen so far.
With excellent support from Tom Hardy and Domhnall Gleeson as John Fitzgerald and Captain Andrew Harvey and the sweeping expanse of the terrain opening up before the audience, this is one film that is surely a must; not just for the adventurous but also for those who believe that a human being cannot rise to the challenge before them, those who find it easier to knock such achievements.
The Revenant is an absolutely stirring film, thrilling and one of true command.
Ian D. Hall