You Do Not Have To Shoot Him Now..."The Revenant"

The Revenant (2015)

Rated R

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, A Very Angry Bear

Directed by Alejandro D. Inarritu

The Story:

Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) is a scout for a fur expedition in the wild American frontier of the 1820s. After leading the group away from an Indian attack, Glass is attacked and brutally mauled by a bear. As they are trying to outrun the Indians that want them all dead, Glass is simply slowing them down.  They leave a few behind including John Fitzgerald (Hardy) to care for him. Bad idea. Fitzgerald wants to leave Glass high and dry. Now Glass has to survive his wounds, the weather, escape the Indians and find Fitzgerald and kill him!

Naturally you have to mention that his was inspired by true events.

How much, and what exactly was true, well that's a mystery lost to the ages.

But Glass was a real guy, and he was attacked by a bear and lived.

Other than that, feel free to take creative license and do what you will with the story.

That DiCaprio finally won an Oscar for this role is odd to say the least.

For the first half of the movie, he barely has any dialogue at all.

Then the last half, well he has a reason not to talk, but still.

It seems like anyone could have the role of trying to survive and seek vengeance. I'm not so sure what was so special about DiCaprio's performance in this film that finally pushed him over the edge with voters.

Matt Damon in The Martian or Bryan Cranston in Trumbo (review coming soon!) were much more watchable and entertaining in their roles than DiCaprio.

Of course, that's not the only example of actors to have lost that deserved to win (those reviews still to come as well!)

And seriously, what was with all the actors breathing heavily onto the camera?

We get it, it's cold out there.

Seems like amateurish filmmaking more than symbolic or anything else.

The good part, with the majority of the film being dialogue free, I was able to Fast Forward through much of the 2 1/2 hour (!!! seriously ?!? !!!) runtime to get to the scenes where things actually happened or people actually spoke.

It's a fine, watchable movie, but Best of the Year or Most Entertaining?

Not even close.

Final Grade: C

Twas the Weekend Before Halloween... "The Revenant"

There are apparently worse things than dying...

The Story:

Bart Gregory (David Anders) is a soldier in the military who gets killed.  However, he winds up coming back to life, and with the help of his best friend Joey (Chris Wylde), he decides that it wouldn't be so bad if he killed bad people and used their blood to keep him alive.  Theoretically, he's doing the rest of the world a service.

Ah, the best laid plans of the undead...

I'm torn.

I'd been on such a great streak with all of the Zom-Coms this year, this one seemed to be heading down similar territory.

Instead of going for full-on vampire or zombie, they used the old myths of the Revenants, corpses that came back from the dead and needed to feast on blood to stay alive.

However, the movie then changes the tone by having the best friend get turned also.

Okay, now we have buddy revenants out for a good time...

But then they come back to the original love story from the beginning...

And the movie seems to lose direction...



Then boredom began to set in.

: /

And don't get me started on the meandering,  "totally lost their way" 3rd act.

It's like a movie that had no idea how it wanted to end, or find a way to execute it.

The final decisions aren't bad, and partly clever.  The beat-around-the-bush way of getting there though downgraded a movie that started off with a fairly strong premise.

Ah well.

Final Grade: C

Rewatchability/Purchase Factor: Have to say no to both.

But tomorrow, the scary weekend is redeemed!