The Revenant

Too many logical inconsistencies to overlook. Sorry.

The Revenant is a masterpiece of grand wilderness adventure film making. Hardly a minute goes by without an awesome vista of spectacular scenery juxtaposed against immense and courageous human struggle. So how could I be so underwhelmed by this movie?

It's a movie about simple revenge... Revenge dominates the plot as well as the subplot. The major story is about trapper and frontier guide Mr. Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is bent on avenging the death of his son. The minor plot finds an old Indian looking to put the hurt on the those who stole his daughter. It takes place sometime around the post Revolutionary war era in the Rocky Mountains where American and French fur traders overlapped.

As mentioned the cinematography is spectacular, the opening scene and especially the grizzly attack was extreme and frightening. There are many other scenes that definitely stir our humanity and make us marvel at the perseverance and endurance of the human mind, body and soul. Honestly most modern men would have curled up and died - myself included.

However, after a half an hour I was bored by the whole thing. The rest of the time I was yearning for a satisfying conclusion. That didn't happen, at least not for me. I was completely unmoved by the final scene and left me thinking: that's it? Mr. Fitzgerald - the antagonist, is such a low life scuzzball you hardly feel anything for him but mild contempt. I had zero emotion after all that struggle. Honestly I've felt more stirring in me after a totally predictable Hallmark Channel movie.

Along the way there were so many logical inconsistencies I could not simply overlook. Muzzle loading flint-lock guns cannot be fired in repeating rapid fire succession. When one plunges into a mountain river and rides the rapids in the dead of winter it's hard to believe hypothermia wouldn't prevent gathering wood and making a fire, yet Glass does all this and much, much more without ever donning a pair of gloves on his hands - I can hardly turn the key in my car in sub-zero temps without gloves. We see Glass walking, or rather stumbling across a vast treeless glacier in which the director makes a point of showing us how desolate and lifeless it was with a wide panoramic shot. In the next scene we see Glass in an ice cave with a burning fire - where did the wood come from? In another scene Glass finds his friend, a kind Pawnee Indian hanging from a tree a hundred yards from his camp where a fire burns near a lean-to shelter that apparently the executioners never saw???


I'm glad the movie is getting the critical acclaim it richly deserves on the film making and acting fronts. The director, cinematographer and DiCaprio all deserve Oscar considerations. Still, I was unmoved and bored much of the time. A movie like this should have drawn me in and made me feel something. The realism certainly made me cringe several times but it wasn't an emotional response at all. Not all movies make you feel, some are just good time spectacles - but this story should have made an emotional impact and it didn't.


3 of 5 stars


CW