The Revenant (2015)

Directed by Alejandro G. Iñarritu
Country: USA

Movie Review: The illustrious screenwriter and film director, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, has been shown unlimited resources in different genres in a meritorious career spanned for more than 15 years. He’s the author of memorable films that were able to resist the difficult test of time, cases of the stylish drama-thrillers, “Amores Perros” and “21 Grams”, the pungent dramas, “Babel” and “Biutiful”, and the deliciously weird black comedy, “Birdman”, with which he won the Academy’s prestigious prizes for best picture, original screenplay, and best director. All of them exhibit a superior quality that allows me to consider him an essential contemporary filmmaker. His new cinematic creation, “The Revenant”, a riveting wintry western, set in the 1980's and partly based on Michael Punke's 2002 novel of the same name, confirms all that has been said, combining the best of the old westerns with the pure spectacle of the modern visuals. Leonardo DiCaprio, even groaning most of the time with a slashed throat, is excellent as Hugh Glass, an explorer and fur trader who miraculously survives a brutal bear attack, but is ingloriously abandoned alive by two of his men, thrown into the grave that had been dug for him. The phenomenal Tom Hardy is John Fitzgerald, the religious villain responsible for this cruel decision. He plays it so confidently that we can easily detect an uncontrollable madness in his eyes and the evil nature in every little move he makes and word he says. Brilliantly directed and evincing an ingenious camerawork, “The Revenant” is simultaneously a murky revenge tale and a rewarding survival odyssey that held my attention from the first to the last minute. Thus, it’s not the traditional cowboys-and-indians flick (there are also mischievous French soldiers trying to profit), even considering that the excitement of those is present along the powerful, primitive story that unfolds with action and tension. The protagonist, not only came to the conclusion that ‘revenge is in God’s hands’, as he had heard before from a responsive Pawnee Indian who had lost his family (killed by the belligerent Sioux), but he also realizes that his path and deliverance were works of heaven. In addition to the rewarding script (by Mark L. Smith and Iñárritu), first-rate direction, and robust acting, we come up with the admirable cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, retrieved from “Birdman”, and the profound musical score by the Japanese Ryuichi Sakamoto, another retrieval, this time from “Babel”, in collaboration with Bryce Dessner and Alva Noto.