>>667343My take...as far as the outdoors/wilderness goes, it was beautiful, stunning, and generally accurate. At times it felt like a documentary.
The story wasn't that great. I didn't buy into the wife/son connection. I didn't really identify with Hugh Glass's motivations. Even as long as the movie was, relationships weren't developed enough. This made the survival/loneliness aspects less moving. Other survival movies with underlying love stories have done this much better: Last of the Mohicans, Lonesome Dove, Cast Away, Cold Mountain. When people in outdoor movies pull off insane feats of survival we have to understand what is motivating them. In one scene Fitzgerald gets asked what he values more his pelts or his life and he says he doesn't have a life, just his pelts which are his living. I don't see what Glass's life was either. The flashbacks and dreams aren't convincing.
I also couldn't really see any theme/message in the movie. I think there were side-bar agendas (Natives, Environment) but not really anything interesting to think about. Revenge I guess.
Lots of minor accuracy problems. People were just too willing to jump in or walk trough freezing rivers during winter in this movie. Glass's son calmly standing waist-deep in the river? That's practically a death sentence. It was also kind of lame Glass was out in the wild, anemic, sick, burning millions of calories off and without much food for at least a few weeks yet Leo maintained his plump little well nourished face.
