The Revenant — Page 3

Namo, I would suggest actually watching the movie before trashing it. I have major problems with it, but overall it's worth your time. At the same time, I agree with everything Roscoe said about it. Basically it's a good movie with an ego the size of jupiter. I got the Thin Red Line connections as well, but the movie does not have Malick's earnestness to justify the "poetic" sequences and lacks the formal magnificence of The Thin Red Line.

But Tom Hardy is terrible in it.

THE REVENANT's story is just preposterous. The line between plausibility and oh-come-the-f*ck-on was crossed very decisively at one point, where DiCaprio survives just one bit of extreme awfulness too many, and entirely unscathed to boot. I remember thinking that even Buster Keaton had the sense to play this kind of thing for a laugh, but of course, Keaton was a genius.

The story's just ridiculously simple, before it takes the turn to simply ridiculous. DiCaprio's Glass is a tracker helping a group of fur trappers in early 19th wilderness America. His trapping party is attacked by native Americans firing CGI arrows, and a lot of the party suffers special effect death, and what's left of the cast has to make its way back to what passes for civilization severely depleted and empty handed. Glass is mauled by a group of stunt coordinators hiding behind a singularly unconvincing CGI bear and as a result Glass suffers severe prosthetic makeup -- he has to lie there and cough under gallons of fake blood and latex and distressed costume material. A plot contrivance named Fitzgerald, played by Tom Hardy using Heath Ledger's vocal mannerisms from BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, rather sensibly realizes that someone suffering such hellish prosthetic makeup hasn't got long to live (Fitzgerald hasn't gotten a look at the film's running time, evidently) and abandons Glass to two hours of crawling through snow, crawling through bloody snow, encountering native Americans, rescuing damsels in distress (I kid you not) and so on. The film takes a final turn into revenge fantasy in it's final quarter, even managing a final detour in shameless self-righteous message-mongering that just has to be seen to be laughed at.

There's some cool music on the soundtrack (a piece by John Luther Adams called BECOME OCEAN gets some play) and there's no denying the skill of the production, it's certainly all very professional. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, of TREE OF LIFE, THE NEW WORLD, GRAVITY and other Oscar-winning fame does his requisite splendid work, but well, I just kept feeling like I'd seen it all before -- the gorgeousness doesn't impress or move or overwhelm precisely because it is so clearly designed to impress AND move AND overwhelm, if you know what I mean. And I haven't even mentioned Glass' Native American wife who appears to him in Malickian/Tarkovskyan/RidleyScottian visions and whispers to him in Malickian whispers and adds some sociological import to the proceedings because that's what Native Americans do in films like this.

^^^ It's like reading the old SPY Magazine.

"The story's just ridiculously simple, before it takes the turn to simply ridiculous." You're dropping hilarious lines like bunny pellets.

"Those of us who enjoy viewing The Revenant are not some kind of lower life form."

No one at any time said or implied or suggested that they were.

I take it all in stride. I'm a somewhat nerdy IT guy and failed playwright. I really appreciate the insights into the technical aspects of movie making and theatre that several of you so readily share.