"The Revenant": Here's what critics are saying about Leonardo DiCaprio's latest film

Leonardo DiCaprio's latest film "The Revenant" is receiving lots of Oscar buzz. Is the upcoming film worth your time?

An upcoming action adventure 'The Revenant,' featuring Tom Hardy and Leonardo DiCaprio is set for limited release on Christmas day.

Synopsis

In 1823, fur trapper Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) is mauled by a bear while hunting in what will become the Dakota Territory.

His companions rob him, murder his young half-Native American son, and leave him to die, but he survives and sets out on a 200 mile trek to get revenge on the men who betrayed him and find the man (Hardy) who killed his son.

 

The movie has been receiving lots of Oscar buzz, but is it worth your time? Check out what critics are saying;

"Accept it as one of the best-directed action movies of the year (second only to "Mad Max: Fury Road") and Iñarritu has done a great service to an underserved genre. Yet no amount of ingenious camerawork and breakneck pacing can obscure a simplistic core. Ultimately, the ambition of "The Revenant" overshadows its big moments," Indiwire.

"But what is so distinctive about this Iñárritu picture is its unitary control and its fluency: no matter how extended, the film’s tense story is under the director’s complete control and he unspools great meandering, bravura travelling shots to tell it: not dissimilar, in some ways, to his previous picture, "Birdman". The movie is as thrilling and painful as a sheet of ice held to the skin," The Guardian.

 

"It's unclear whether Iñárritu has any broader philosophical agenda worthy of the craft he showcases here.

But while the style may outpace the substance, that doesn't make the style any less magnificent. And when it comes to sheer customer satisfaction, The Revenant checks nearly every box, up to and including the man vs. wild throwdown. It just makes a jarring, memorable statement about how often the wild is likely to win that uneven fight," The Verge.

"The Revenant isn’t a smooth ride at all but it’s a film on the very grandest scale - a frostbitten epic which can’t help but provoke a sense of awe through its its visual daring and the sheer demented scope of its ambition," The Independent.

"The very different settings may disguise the fact, but the recent film The Revenant actually resembles a great deal is Gravity, the outer space smash directed by Iñárritu’s friend and colleague Alfonso Cuaron. Both are solitary survival stories set in deeply inhospitable environments where human beings cannot survive without the aid of man-made equipment, not to mention uncanny resourcefulness.

Both are projects dependent upon the long-term commitment and charisma of a top star to get them made, the advances in special visual effects to make them seamlessly credible and the brilliance of cinematographer Lubezki to provide the highest level of visual astonishment. Both projects were big gambles even for filmmakers as accomplished as these two to take on. And they both pulled them off," The Hollywood Reporter.

 

"In all these films, the virtuosity of the storytelling can’t quite disguise a leadenness and lack of modulation that suggest Iñárritu’s chief talent is for bludgeoning his audience — sometimes artfully, sometimes merely artily — into submission.

The final reckoning between Glass and Fitzgerald is grippingly staged, and audiences hoping to see payback exacted in full will find satisfaction. But here and elsewhere, Lubezki’s camera, with its creeping, darting movements and stealthy 360-degree turns, doesn’t observe the action so much as instigate it. The long-take action sequences begin to feel almost sadistic in their pre-planning. Developments that should be shocking instead take on an air of grinding predictability," Hollywood Reporter.

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