If you are ever having the sort of day where everything seems to conspire against you, spare a thought for fur-trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio).
THE REVENANT
Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter
Rating: (R16)
Four stars (out of five)
Working in the frozen wilderness of Montana-South Dakota in the early 1800s, Glass has a relentless run of misfortune.
In a film based on a novel inspired by real events, Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu tells a tale that is inexorable, brutal and thoroughly torturous ... and that is just the first 15 minutes.
The action starts when a Native American tribe ambushes Glass and his hunting party.
While fleeing, Glass stumbles into the path of a grizzly bear and is torn to shreds, yet refuses to die.
Glass soon becomes a burden for the remaining trappers and after nearly being suffocated by Tom Hardy, perfectly cast as the venal John Fitzgerald, Glass is abandoned in a shallow grave and left to rot.
Of course he doesn't.
The whole purpose of the nearly three-hour epic is to make you squirm as DiCaprio's unwaveringly gritty performance convinces you he might just live to exact the revenge he so desperately desires.
Sumptuously shot on super-wide lenses, with natural light and in some of the most inhospitable locations imaginable, The Revenant looks stunning.
Inarritu doesn't even bother to get his camera operator to clean blood and water off the lens in the thick of the action.
Just through the sheer madness of Glass' refusal to keel over, we are kept tuned in to his every grunt and groan, if only to see how he copes with his next hurdle.
- Mark Orton
