10 Greatest Westerns Of The 21st Century
2. The Revenant
A visceral, bone-crunching Western unlike any other, The
Revenant is perhaps the most purposefully nasty
movie on this list. Although it veers away into strange, cerebral,
acid-Western territory on occasion, The Revenant is known and appreciated
mainly for its physicality, its gruesome scenes of realistic violence,
mutilation, and ad-hoc mid-battle first aid.
The Revenant follows the story of Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), a stoic and well-worn frontiersman collecting pelts in the great American north. After a viscous bear attack leaves him all but dead, his colleague Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) attempts to finish the job, burying him alive in the process. As the title suggests, Glass survives, or for all intents and purposes rise from the dead, in order to enact revenge upon his former ally.
The Revenant will live on in history
as ‘the movie that finally won Leo an Oscar’, but as a piece of cinema, it is
much more than simply a vehicle for DiCaprio’s skills. It’s one of the most
beautifully shot films of the decade; Iñárritu’s striking depiction of the
cold American frontier is both a stark parallel and a complimentary backdrop
for the violence and ugliness at hand.