The Revenant

tonyb

Saw this one over the weekend and have to say it was not very good. Yeah the bear scene was good, but for the most part what you saw in the trailer was about it. Leo did a good job acting as usual, but the movie failed to keep my attention for any length of time.

Plus some things just didn't make sense to me. Mountain men in freezing weather walking around in water, even falling in a river and going over a waterfall, down rapids only to have a very small fire out in the open save you ? One scene he goes over a cliff on a horse, has to fall 150 ft. min. into a tall pine tree and lands on the ground with no broken bones, nothing ? Then because it's freezing, he guts the horse and spends the night inside to keep warm.....but then leaves in the morning without cutting himself some horse meat to eat....and he's supposedly starving ? Another scene has the bad guy and a younger mountain man walking through an Indian camp that was decimated. The younger one see's and Indian woman and leaves her some food on the sly. That's great....except for the fact that there's wild boar, lots of them, wandering around the camp.

The whole movie is shot in the wilderness which is fine by me, except it's missing one animal you would find in abundance....wolves. The score sucked, cinematography was nothing to write home about. On a letter grade scale, I'd give it a C.

To think this and the Martian were nominated for Oscars in more than one category tells me we have really lowered our standards.

Jimbo18

I liked it better than you did, Tony, but agree with a lot of your comments. It was definitely too long. By the 2 hour mark, I was like "just frigging kill him already".

MrBuhl

^^ I agree with Jimbo ^^ I liked it better than you did as well Tony. Oscar - maybe not (though I think it will get there anyway) but still entertaining.

It did require suspension of belief, as do most Hollywood creations. Those flintlocks must have had magic pans to hold powder through some of those scenes LOL!

dromunds

I saw it yesterday. Agree with your comments, especially going down the freezing river and waterfalls and then warming up on small fire on snow covered shore. Also, he never ran out of powder to start fires from that little container he took from his son's neck after he died. Good acting from Leo, and Fitzgerald too, for that matter. I just finished reading Steven Ambrose's book on Meriweather Lewis and it must've been a tough breed that took on that wildnerness. Imagine fifteen years before the Revanant took place taking an expedition against the current up the Missouri and then crossing the Rocky Mountains? One thing I liked about the Revanant is the inkling you get of what it must've been like to try to just survive out there at that time.

chumlie

Just a re-make of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeJp7cvcpwg

dromunds

Another thing I was just thinking about during the movie was whether they would've had such nice multi-pane windows in that remote outpost? Also, seemed like some of those pistols fired more than they should have without reloading. Lol.

Jimbo18

@chumlie, I thought of Richard Harris when I watched The Revenant but didn't remember why. I saw Man in the Wilderness a couple times many years ago and liked it. I think it was made around the time of his Man Called Horse movie.

chumlie

Horse 1970
Wilderness 1971
@Jimbo18

gfong

It's Hollywood... if you did or plan to do any reading on the actual events, you will see that 90% of the movie is non factual. He didn't even have an Indian son or wife, he did not get revenge as both of the perpetrators were forgiven by him and all three died of natural causes. He did get attacked by a bear but not the same time frame as when he was with the fur outfit. I really liked the movie for what it was but because it was so loosely based on actual events I may as well compare it to Rambo being factual.

polk500

I thought it was a waste of time and money for reasons already stated above. The acting was OK even good but they stretched the realms of reality just a bit to much as one don't survive freezing to death in the north when one is subjected to being plunged into water just above freezing and that little fire when it's already freezing out come on man we all know you have to get out the wet gear and get your Core temperature back up or you just don't survive, I mean it was bad enough he got humped by a bear and lived for petes sake...

Cheers

whgarrett1394

You guys are hilarious. Being that this section is called Music and Movies I would upon first look assume that you out of touch, old farts are into both movies and music but over the years I have realized the opposite is true. In general you are like the old retired curmudgeon basking in the south Florida sun complaining about the state of the nation. Opinions are just that...opinions, but yours are in no way EVER in line with my own. I thought The Revenant was very enjoyable. Oh and it was nominated for what? .....12 Oscars. No hard feelings i'm sure. You all should have thick enough skin by now.

tonyb

Ha....doesn't say much if it was nominated for 12 Oscars. The Martian was too, but I've seen better made for TV movies than that. All that means is the Oscar nominating process has become suspect, which takes away from the value of it in my opinion.

leftwinger57

Hey Tony the sleeping in an animal carcass is a real survival technique. I once saw on Bear Gryll's show him gutting out a camel and sleeping in there for a night. He also squeezed out some water from the camel's doody to get water from it. About the fall no way, trudging through ice water w/o getting hypothermia,or frostbite, no way. As for the bear tearing into him no way. I did see that it was a stunt man in a bear suit kinda like the attacking Dobies in The Omen, they were hand puppets. Training just goes so far and no wild animal can stop biting once in a rage. With out seeing the flick it looks like a modern take on Jeremia Johnson which Robert Redford had the lead.
The mantra for all survivalists is water, shelter, fire, food in that order.

scottyboy76

I think tb had a problem not with the sleeping inside the carcass, but waking and walking away a starving man without slicing even a little meat off.

I hate to hear the generally bad reviews and the obscenely small factual integrity.

I dont kid myself about hollywood claiming "Inspired by true events" but this sounds like a hell of a stretch even for hollywood.

I will wait for this to come to direct, i had been thinking of plopping down a few bucks to see it on the big screen