Now that Leonardo DiCaprio has won both the Golden Globes and the SAG Best Film Actor award, expectations are high for a sweep at the Oscars on February 28th. While the film itself is a mixed blessing, DiCaprio’s performance is definitely worthy, and I don’t think his competition is strong enough for an upset. Still, The Wolf of Wall Street should have gotten him his first statuette.

The Revenant shows that director and co-writer Alejandro Inarritu can handle a simple story with skill, and be free of mannerisms. In contrast, last year’s award-winning Birdman was basically a mediocre play that was filmed – for no apparent reason – in one take.  Really, nothing more than a film school exercise.

The Revenant begins with a humdinger of an Indian attack, as scary as they come. The victims are a party of fur traders led by Glass (DiCaprio), and only ten survive, including Glass and his teenage son. After Glass is nearly mauled to death by a bear, the others go on alone, leaving him with Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and another member, a boy who is easily intimidated. Fitzgerald, a covetous cheat and a racist, hates Glass and his son because Glass had married an indian who, we see in flashback, had been murdered by government soldiers. Fitzgerald murders Glass’s son, then buries Glass alive, bullying the other trapper into leaving him there while they return to an army fort.

This is basically the first act of a familiar revenge western. By its conclusion, the audience is exhausted, but satisfied within the terms of its genre. After much, much suffering, the good guy wins, the bad – oh, so bad! – villain meets a deserved and bloody fate. The major flaw is that it is nearly three hours long. I couldn’t help thinking what a superior studio “hack” – like Anthony Mann or Richard Fleischer – would have done with this story. Mann, especially, would’ve snuck in a few laughs. Although the violence was more realistic, and the sheer number of DiCaprio’s sufferings are beyond what any movie hero should have to survive, the dramatic payoff doesn’t justify that length. Also, Glass’s flashbacks of his wife are ludicrous and clumsy.

DiCaprio has only one speech, near the end – when he pleads to join the party to find Fitzgerald, and kill him – that allows him to display his artistry. Hardy’s Fitzgerald is a crude match-up of Borgnine-bully and Eddie Albert-rat, but he gives the ham plenty of juice. Still, the real stars are the animal trainers, who rate their own documentary for this. I also learned that if you look at cute bear cubs, watch out for momma.