“Revenant” is a gritty and terrifying western about Hugh Glass, a 19th Century frontiersman, left for dead after a mind-chilling, grizzly bear attack.

Glass crawls and limps, near death, bleeding from open sores, suffering unremitting pain, across hundreds of miles, to find and to kill the man who abandoned him who was charged with keeping him alive; Leonardo DiCaprio gives an Academy Award-winning performance as Glass in Alejandro Inarritu’s amazing movie.

It’s a primal story of survival, devotion, relentless cliff-hanging danger, disaster, betrayal, torment, violence, revenge, and human savagery.

This is a vivid rear view reflection on a society with little use for law or custom.

This is a world, both primitive and elemental, played out before sweeping scenic panoramas so wild and untamed that life is continuously at risk, both from the natural surroundings but also from the savage man.

Aristotle wrote that, “At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separate from law and justice he is the worst.

In the movie, Revenant, man is at his worst.

Revenant is an excursion into savagery and teaches the value of law and civility. Continue reading →