Review of The Revenant (2015) by Ahnehnois — 28 Jan 2016

The technical achievements are impressive. The gorgeous cinematography and a hardcore central performance cannot be denied. But the film is dragged down by two problems.

The first, somewhat unavoidable, is that there aren't enough surprises. You pretty much go in knowing that the guy is getting mauled by a bear and going through a harrowing journey of survivalism. The movie would have played much better if one went in for a story about early America without knowing this, but of course, most people who even passingly read news had already heard the story, and the promotional material gave away a lot.

The second, worse, and far more avoidable problem is that the writing is far more lost than Hugh Glass ever was. The story has been embellished, Hollywood-ized, and the entire point of it has been changed. Where the true story is morally ambiguous, the movie invents a son that his teammate pointlessly murders, all of which is completely unnecessary. Silly dream sequences detract from the main character's perspective. Entire Native American storylines have been added to pad the runtime, where it would be better to make another movie separately about them. A silly and gratuitous rape was added, and a rescue invented where none really happened. And perhaps most importantly, where the real man let the people who left him behind live, this movie degenerates into a Quentin Tarantino revenge flick.

All of this serves to take a nuanced story about real people in tough circumstances and impose modern moral values and politics over it in an effort to create a more palatable narrative. This movie did not need good guys and bad guys, but yet they were manufactured anyway. Take the same skill in production and stick to the real story and you've potentially got a great movie. As it is, you've got one that looks nice, but frustratingly insults the audience's intelligence.