Few movies in recent memory have managed to rival Alejandro Iñárritu's The Revenant in terms of sheer filmmaking prowess. From top to bottom, it's simply a brilliant piece of cinema. However, that doesn't mean it's not without its own fair share of flaws. The folks at CinemaSins have clearly picked up on these flaws and dedicated an entire 10-minute video to tearing The Revenant apart. Honestly, it gets fairly brutal, so check it out below to see for yourself.
See what I mean? In the above video, they tear The Revenant apart like a grizzly bear cornering Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the American wilderness. Although they acknowledge that it's genuinely a good film, they note that it's completely full of plot holes that seem to exist only to push the narrative of The Revenant forward. Sure, it's based upon a true story, but the way many of the characters in the film are depicted making decisions don't make a great deal of sense -- from leaving Hugh Glass with a man who clearly dislikes him, to the fact that everyone who corners John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) with a gun always seems to put themselves in a position where he can take it from them.
However, the issue that seems to pop up the most for the guys at CinemaSins seems to be the film's unnecessarily long run time. For a movie with an incredibly straightforward narrative, Alejandro Iñárritu tends to take his sweet time getting everything going. We cannot deny how beautiful some scenes are, but they have an overwhelming tendency to repeat the visuals and themes of the film over and over again. By the end of the entire video, The Revenant has garnered 92 separate CinemaSins, meaning that -- while it's certainly a beautiful movie -- it's not necessarily the perfect film that many people made it out to be when it hit theaters.
In fairness to The Revenant, the folks at CinemaSins actually take a few moments to go out of their way to praise the film throughout the run time of this video. Although it's clear that The Revenant has plenty of plot holes, they never deny that it's a beautifully shot movie, and that it's far more masterfully put together than even the highest grossing of superhero movies. If you remember correctly, The Revenant garnered some pretty prestigious awards this year, and we think that it most definitely earned every single one of those accolades.
What do you think of this video? Were any sins from The Revenant missed or are the guys at CinemaSins nitpicking the movie a little bit too much? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
