The Revenant is a survival-against-the-odds film that so puts Leonardo DiCaprio through it I bet he was thinking, ‘I wish I was back on that boat that went down.’ He is mauled by a bear. Viciously. He is buried alive. He eats still-throbbing, blood-dripping raw liver, and quite forgets his manners. (Wipe your chin, man; there’s never any excuse.) He cauterises his own wounds, falls off cliffs, spins down rapids, slits open a dead horse and sleeps within for warmth. The film recently triumphed at the Golden Globes — best film, best director (Alejandro G. Iñárritu), best actor (DiCaprio) — but all I was thinking was, ‘Oh God, please let this be over soon.’ Faint hope. It’s two-and-a-half hours long, long, long and while there are moments of tremendous, jaw-dropping beauty, the violence is so pitiless and the spiritual aspects so pitiful that even I wished he was back on that boat that went down.
Deborah Ross
Endurance test
Whether you enjoy this film will essentially depend on how strong your stomach is and how much you’re into watching Leonardo DiCaprio grunting for two-and-a-half hours
issue 16 January 2016
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