The Revenant

**The following is a long form review that I originally wrote in 2015.** From a technical point of view, _The Revenant_ is one of the most masterful pieces of cinema I've ever seen. This made its one technical failure all the more jarring. The ADR. I don't know how or why this was allowed to happen, but the dubbing of the Native Americans is some 70's style shit, it's awful, and it's awful every single time. In your average film this would be only a minor annoyance, but in _The Revenant_ which A) pretty much nails everything else in the AV department, and B) Takes itself so goddamn seriously, this issue is painfully distracting. I also found myself continuously rooting for the antagonists (first the bear, and later Hardy) subconsciously, and scolding myself for it. The good aspect of this is that it was rooted in the fact that all the characters are humanised (even the bear) and fallible, which I like, but the flip-side to that is I was less sympathetic to Leo's character, which takes up the majority of the screen time, and thusly I did not feel fully engaged for a large portion of the movie. In fact the whole second and third acts underwhelmed me in that exact way. That's not to say that they were bad, but they were invariably weaker than the first act. After its end the rest of the film did feel like it was stretched a mite thin. That all said, I knew within about 90 seconds that I was going to give _The Revenant_ a favourable review. Visually, it has this ethereal effect. It feels **too** real. So real that it must be a trick, the world of _The Revenant_ is alien in its realness. A bizarre contradictory nature that struck a chord with me immediately. For the average cinema-goer, I would say _The Revenant_ is worth your time, but for a movie aficionado or film student, I would say _The Revenant_ isn't anything short of a must. 75% -_Gimly_