The Revenant - DiCaprio Endures Torture for 2.5 Hours

[Colt47]

Really desperate to see this, but it's rough trying to find people who are into this werner herzog, black robe kinda film. Think I'm just gonna go later today. As stated if you've lived in the harsher parts of the northwest NA it really helps you sink into this. I lived in Montana and worked in Wyoming for about 4 years and even today there's periods where travel is not happening without a snow mobile. I think on average 3-10 people die in Montana every year from from exposure. Even in the trailers you could really feel the cold.

For me it's the run time that keeps me away. The subject is fine with the whole graphic survival / revenge story in a "nature is scary" setting, just at 2h 40m run time without including the previews, that would be one heck of a grindfest. Albeit, I've heard great things from those who did go see it outside of the fact the movie didn't really support the hype surrounding it.

 

[RedDeadFred]

It's amazing how gorgeous he makes the generic countryside of my province. Seriously, a lot of our landscapes are pretty boring unless you're in the Rockies or the badlands.

 

[The Great JT]

I prefer to call this movie "Can DiCaprio Have His Oscar Now?" Seriously, he was fantastic in this movie.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I wish I had bought a larger bag of popcorn. That said, I got totally lost in the cinematography and I think its a good thing to indulge in a slower paced movie every once and awhile. The only thing that bothered me in the film was the use of the pistols. They didn't reload that fast dammit. <.<

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I would've made the one or two irritating plot inconsistencies my prime grievance:

Spoiler

How the native americans are searching so hard for that girl, but never realize she was with the French even though they seemed to trade with them a lot. Small problem which I found easy to ignore.

Spoiler: Based on the

runtime of the film up until that point and the distance traveled since the initial encounter with French traders; I would say its safe to assume these two French groups were un-affiliated. One reason leading me to that conclusion is the fact that the kidnappers hung Hugh's savior whereas the other group traded and were comfortable taking advantage of the tribe through business rather than violence.

The other thing is that (it was one line, I may have missed its accuracy) it was implied that the girl and the horses were stolen from the tribe. This makes them seem much less like trappers or potential settlers and more like racist frontier brigands. They might have stolen other things of value from the Arikara but horses at that time were very valuable in their own right and could have been sold for the benefit of the bandits. Lastly, the survivor of that group who managed to make it to the American trade post with the important water canteen was greeted as a criminal. How many stolen pelts did that cost? Etc. His reception tells me definitively that they were a separate group of men as the first French leader was hesitant to accept any branded pelts.

It was a wilder time for North America. Different groups wandered around for different reasons out in the territory not yet formally under state control. Based on how fierce the Arikara were in the battle at the beginning, its likely their property and the chief's daughter were stolen with minimal attention in the night. After they probably reached out to their neighboring tribes (I assume stealing a daughter and the horses of a warrior tribe was not the way things were done), it was natural that they attacked the nearest group of trespassing white men in order to rescue her. The French in the area were established entities to them.

I have an interest in history so the politics of how the different factions on the continent during the time are of interest to me. I think the characters followed the most reasonable course of action considering their circumstances.

Well, the ones with honour anyway. <.<

The grounding of the politics at play even if the details aren't 100% accurate is what kept me in the movie.

 

[Sarge034]

you wont... and can't.

Wow! Can you read everyone's mind or just mine? Quite some hubris you have there to assume to know that I can't explain everything rationally and state it as fact.

Spoiler

I know who the woman was and I know why they let him live. That wasn't the complaint.
Issue is the natives do not know who the other guy was and Caprios character didn't have any reason whatsoever to give him to the natives as he (the guy who gets scalped) never did anything to the natives. The qualm was between white man.
Let the natives courtesy kill him? Sure why not... still makes little sense, he could have killed him himself anyway.

Spoiler

No reason to give him to the natives? Beyond that being stated as the one thing he'd never let happen, being scalped alive again right? DeCaprio could have killed him sure, but instead chose to let the natives kill him not just so they could kill him but because it was his biggest fear. They didn't need to know who the other guy was, the guy that did them a huge favor is in a fight to the death with another dude. That's all they needed to know.