The Revenant Review

The Revenant takes us back to the American frontier during the early 19th century, back when life (so to speak) in the unsettled lands of Montana and the Dakotas hung by the precarious threads of mankind’s savagery, and nature’s cruel whims. There we meet legendary American frontiersman and explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is leading a fur trapping expedition for Captain Andrew Henry (Domnhall Gleeson) and his company. The expedition takes a bad turn when the company is brutally attacked by a hunting party of Arikara Native Americans; bad turns to worse when, while on the run back to the fort, the company loses their best hope of survival, as Glass is mortally wounded in a grizzly bear attack.

Captain Henry orders two men – Jim Bridger (Will Poulter) and John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) – to stay behind with Glass’s son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), to help the boy give his father proper burial, once the legendary frontiersman has finally died. However, fear of the Arikara pushes Fitzgerald to betray his oath and abandon Glass, half-buried in the frozen ground. But Glass doesn’t die – on the contrary, he claws his way out of the grave, and sets to dragging himself – wounds and all – through all the savage terrain of the frontier, and the murderous Arikara still hunting him, back to the outpost where he can find Fitzgerald, and show him what it truly takes to bury a dead man.