The Revenant

On the plus sides, great performances from DiCaprio and Hardy, good cinematography and nice backdrops.

On the down sides, the plot is virtually non existent, totally predictable. No characters are developed in the slightest. The spiritual imagery was so cheesy and naff.

6/10 for me.

Could see oscars for Hardy and/or DiCaprio, but it would be a travesty if it got best picture.
 
mid_gen said:
Hah, so it's a true story....
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Technically a loose treatment of mostly fictional 21st century book retelling of a short 19th century newspaper sensationalist story regarding folklore tale based around a real person. It's so far removed from the original folklore that the story of spiritual strength and forgiveness became one of murder and revenge.
 
mid_gen said:
On the plus sides, great performances from DiCaprio and Hardy, good cinematography and nice backdrops.

On the down sides, the plot is virtually non existent, totally predictable. No characters are developed in the slightest. The spiritual imagery was so cheesy and naff.

6/10 for me.

Could see oscars for Hardy and/or DiCaprio, but it would be a travesty if it got best picture.
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I dont think the characters were any more developed than they needed to be.

Tom Hardy was a ****, tried to kill leo, stabbed his only reason for living, and then wax hunted down and exposed as the liar and murderer we know he was. The movie for me was about us witnessing the act of revenge and an unwilingnes to rest until vengeance had been satisfied. Personally I didn't find myself wanting anything more, I just felt like I was a fly on the wall watching him go through hell and feeling it almost every step of the way. I was fully immersed in that one goal until the credits rolled.

Also cool to see Arthur from Peaky Blinders in there, and the kid that accompanied Tom Hardy I saw in a movie called Wild Bill last week.

EDIT - spoiler tags added
 
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I just got bored. The whole film was laid out in the opening scenes.

Dicaprio = dead native wife, son, Hardy the bad guy, well meaning but naive boss etc..they never really move on from there.

It's not awful, i just expected more from the hype. I was willing him on to just get on with it for the whole second half when it was clear there aren't going to be any plot susprises.

I'm actually quite a fan of Terence Malick style lingering nature shots but this just felt a bit ham-fisted in comparison. The film is really just a simple revenge flick and I would have probably enjoyed it a lot if it was just 90 minutes of that without all the pretence of the spiritual fluff begging for oscar nominations.
 
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Thanks for the spoilers guys, seen as this isn't out in the UK yet..

To add to the thread a couple of my colleagues are BAFTA members and so got their screeners. Both thought it was amazing. I can't wait to see it.
 
Just watched this, loved it, visceral is certainly the word, incredibly brutal but utterly beautiful at the same time. Non existent plot complaint seems a bit facile, it's obviously a revenge film at it's core but through the acting, the cinematography, the pace etc. it's much more than that.
 
I was a brutal film. I personally don't think the whole package was amazing. Certain elements were great, namely DiCaprio's acting and the cinematography.

The artsy stuff felt very out of place. What was the significance really of having a half Indian son? The whole story could have been done exactly the same as if he was just a naive white boy. I'm not saying I have a problem with him being half Indian, I just thought they might have been able to explain the significance in that 2 and half hours. Was DiCaprio's wife Powaqa?

One thing that really irked me was that just the captain and one sick man went after Fitzgerald.

I thought Hardy was incomprehensible at times, he did a good job of making me utterly detest his character though.

I really liked the section where he meets the other lone wolf seeking revenge. I was super gutted when he was just there hanging. The french were just ******** to everyone in this movie lol
 
It's based roughly on true events, historical accounts suggest he wed a Pawnee woman - plus it explains his ability to speak the language, the disdain from Hardy's character etc. As for Powaqa:

No, she's not his wife, his wife is dead and is the woman he sees in his visions / dreams. Powaqa is the woman he saves when being raped by the French. She is seen at the end of the film with the other natives in the final scene
 
One said:
The artsy stuff felt very out of place. What was the significance really of having a half Indian son? The whole story could have been done exactly the same as if he was just a naive white boy. I'm not saying I have a problem with him being half Indian, I just thought they might have been able to explain the significance in that 2 and half hours.
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The character of his son was fictional. Although it is unclear whether a story of Hugh Grass and his native spouse is a fact or lore fiction, what is certain is that he never had any children. Also, in real wild west lore, Grass tracked down Fitzgerald and Bridger only to forgive them. Unfortunately that kind of stuff doesn't make good hollywood movie these days, so certain things in Revenant story were adjusted and added for better impact. His summer encounter with a bear was moved to winter (grizzly bears torpor in winter), his 80 mile crawl was extended by several hundred miles, and the character of his native son was added to explain his thirst for revenge. Any why native? Because any wrongdoing against native person would be outside of regular letter of law, leaving retribution in Grass' own hands.
 
Saw this last night and I was pretty hyped to see it. Quite honestly, I found it a tiny bit disappointing. It just seemed to lack something I can't put my finger on to make it epic.

The soundtrack was largely forgettable which I thought was quite a big misstep when you have a film with epic scenery like this one, I found the audio levels/dialogue slightly hard to make out in one or two scenes which annoyed me, and as far as cinematography, there are of course some shots which are stunning, but as a whole, the recent Macbeth movie was a film where I was just in complete awe pretty much throughout. This just didn't make me feel the same way.

Leo was incredible though. Definitely Oscar worthy. Don't get me wrong though, I still really enjoyed it. Probably 8 or 8.5/10 from me.
 
Nimzicki said:
It's based roughly on true events, historical accounts suggest he wed a Pawnee woman - plus it explains his ability to speak the language, the disdain from Hardy's character etc. As for Powaqa:

No, she's not his wife, his wife is dead and is the woman he sees in his visions / dreams. Powaqa is the woman he saves when being raped by the French. She is seen at the end of the film with the other natives in the final scene
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I meant maybe his dead wife was powaqa. I didn't notice that it was the girl with them at the end.

Why the hell didn't they help him then? He clearly seems more at home with the native americans than the white folk.
 
Smeghead said:
Saw this last night and I was pretty hyped to see it. Quite honestly, I found it a tiny bit disappointing. It just seemed to lack something I can't put my finger on to make it epic.

The soundtrack was largely forgettable which I thought was quite a big misstep when you have a film with epic scenery like this one, I found the audio levels/dialogue slightly hard to make out in one or two scenes which annoyed me, and as far as cinematography, there are of course some shots which are stunning, but as a whole, the recent Macbeth movie was a film where I was just in complete awe pretty much throughout. This just didn't make me feel the same way.

Leo was incredible though. Definitely Oscar worthy. Don't get me wrong though, I still really enjoyed it. Probably 8 or 8.5/10 from me.
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Yeah, with a Hanz Zimmer soundtrack this movie could have been on another level of audio goodness and an OST worth buying.
 
v0n said:
The character of his son was fictional. Although it is unclear whether a story of Hugh Grass and his native spouse is a fact or lore fiction, what is certain is that he never had any children. Also, in real wild west lore, Grass tracked down Fitzgerald and Bridger only to forgive them. Unfortunately that kind of stuff doesn't make good hollywood movie these days, so certain things in Revenant story were adjusted and added for better impact. His summer encounter with a bear was moved to winter (grizzly bears torpor in winter), his 80 mile crawl was extended by several hundred miles, and the character of his native son was added to explain his thirst for revenge. Any why native? Because any wrongdoing against native person would be outside of regular letter of law, leaving retribution in Grass' own hands.
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GLass.

Maybe you misheard his name, but please stop saying Grass.
 
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