‘Tis the season, and I certainly don’t mean Christmas. For the uninitiated, we are now in Oscar Bait season, when all the Oscar hopefuls come out and show us their stuff, and once again Leonardo DiCaprio hopes his latest five-star performance is going to win him that coveted idol. After watching The Revenant, would I say he deserves it? That is always a decision above me, which can only be decided democratically, but I for one do hope Leo finally gets the award, and he has worked hard for it, and is the sympathetic hero.

In one word, The Revenant is brutal. Just brutal. The film does not relent from beginning to end in its ferocity, it’s reality and its violence. This is not a dear, sweet evening flick to take the kids to, but a savage and brutal story of raw survival on the edges of civility. It is not a nice film, in the meaning of it being gentle. This is nature, tooth and claw, as violent and savage as it can be. The hero must survive a mauling from a bear, the murdering of his only son, and being buried alive and left for dead by the two men meant to watch over him, and that is the beginning of his journey of survival. But the film isn’t just a savage, relentless tale at the periphery of society, it is also a deeply spiritual and moral story. Glass, the character Leo plays is a fairly honourable man, compared to many of the characters in his initial party.

Although a well-crafted old-fashioned revenge story, Glass learns an important lesson along the way: Revenge is in the hands of God, and he refuses in the end to take revenge for himself, giving up the villain, Fitzgerald, played very well by Tom Hardy. The film may not have, overall, a great plot, which is the one core weakness of The Revenant, and this does show towards the end of the film, when I can feel the story wrapping up and the loose ends being dealt with. The finale, although perhaps lacking the edge it so clearly needs, in the least makes sense. By film’s end, it feels more like a typical revenge film with the one-on-one confrontation as the films climax, all dressed up in intense acting and realistic drama, but any weaknesses are, I feel, eclipsed by the excellent and hopefully Oscar-winning performances by its two leads. The film was built on raw emotion. It is not a logical film, meaning there is less of an emphasis on narrative and plot, but on characters, on journeys and on moments. It is a film that is meant to be felt more than understood, a deep and pronounced primal nature.

Rating: 6.1 out of 7.0.