Movie Thoughts: The Revenant (2015)

• Released: 16 December 2015
• Directed by: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
• Running time: 2 h 36 min
• Rating 4/5

Synopsis

A hunter is left for dead after a grizzly attack, and now must make his way back to his people for safety and revenge.

My Thoughts

This is just a very well-made movie. It has surprisingly little dialog, yet still conveys each character really well in what they're about and what's going on inside their head.

It's also not for the faint of heart. This movie was brutal, extremely so. One of the first scenes is an entire encampment being murdered, followed up not much later by our main character (Hugh Glass) being mauled by a grizzly mother. There's also depictions of rape and anti-indigenous racism, so trigger warning for that. I totally get why this movie might not be for everyone.

It does take a lot of liberties with the story it is based on (which has arguably already been embellished a lot), but as a movie it just really works. The setting is in the middle of winter instead of summer, and that just adds more stakes to the story because Glass might very well freeze to death. The fact that he's also consistently being pursued makes things even more difficult.

The CGI in this film actually looked great for once. Like, no matter how realistic a movie get, I can usually still tell instantly when they use a CGI stand-in for an animal, but for this one I had to do a double take to check if the grizzly wasn't an actual animal they used. It's not, but the CGI on it looks fantastic.

Finally, the ending is a bit...ambiguous. Glass makes it back to his fort and people, but sets out on another mission to track down the man who left him for dead. What ensues is a fight between them that indirectly leads to Fitzgerald dying. And Glass does survive the fight for a while, but the ending after that is ambiguous. I have yet to decide if I like this ending or not (in real life Glass lived for a while after returning to the fort), but it's definitely a strong note to end on. And we hear him breathing throughout the credits, so I'm going to assume that's a hint that he lived.

Overall a great film if you can stomach the darker content.