The Revenant

The Good

I am a mountain man, by Gawd! so I am excited to a mountain man movie no matter what. The opening sequence of the trappers in the wilderness getting their beaver furs packed up for the long journey back was amazing. The intensity of the Indian attack kept me on the edge of my seat and the scenes of the trappers doing the business trapping felt truly authentic. The fur-trade era fort was amazing and felt real.   It was cold, damn cold. Tom Hardy was incredible as the malicious trapper Fitzgerald.  The bear attack . . . THE FREAKIN’ BEAR ATTACK!!

The costumes were spot-on, with one small exception below . . .

The Bad

How did the Indian get into the tree to snipe the trappers? Indians shooting arrows from sniper-rifle range distance? I found myself wondering if these were a lost tribe of ninjas.   The flashback scenes showed a group of soldiers attacking the Pawnee that really looked like Spaniards.   Glass and his son looked like they were the same age.   Glass was in his early 40s when the bear incident occurred, because Leo doesn’t age, he looks like a kid, dressed like a man, dressed like a mountain man.   Which for Hollywood is probably spot on . . .

Our hero grabbed a pistol from the Frenchman and proceeded to fire it four times without reloading. Did he grab a shot pouch that I missed? Luckily grab the right size ball?   And my most fundamental question for a pack of pre-1840s dudes living in the wilderness . . . where were all of their hats?

Looks like Pedersoli (or one of their distributors) did a good bit of business on this movie . . .

The Run-down

There are a lot of classic movie moments in here.   The most obvious is the cutting open the pony to stay warm – calling back to the tauntaun scene in ESB.   Two elements from First Blood – the jumping off the cliff into the tree to break a fall, using gunpowder to cauterize a wound. And finally, the inevitable ending where our protagonist and antagonist square off to settle the scope with hawk, knife and fisticuffs.

Overall, I would say it’s probably worth seeing, but I just don’t see the staying power of a Jeremiah Johnson…