The Revenant hit theaters this weekend and everyone is buzzing about it. Some critics are even going as far as to say this movie will be the one that will finally win Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar. I spent a part of my weekend watching it and I will be sharing a summary of it in this article. Warning: this article contains spoilers.

The film begins with Glass (DiCaprio) hunting in the forest with his son Hawk. While they are away, their group of trappers is attacked by a Pawnee Native American tribe. Glass has lived with the Pawnees before and speaks their language. He even married a Pawnee woman and Hawk is their son.

A few men do escape the Pawnee attack along with Glass and Hawk. The men have to then try to make it to their fort before winter hits. The next scene really changed the course of the entire movie. Glass is attacked by a grizzly bear while he is separated from the group in the forest. He is injured very badly in his battle with the bear to the point where he cannot speak, is unable to walk and can barely breathe but his one shot that he got out of his rifle was enough to signal the rest of the group so that they were able to find him.

When the group finds Glass after the bear assault, they originally try to move along with him. However, when this proves to be too difficult and detrimental to the rest of the group, Captain Andrew Henry decides that John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger will stay with Hawk and Glass in what everyone expects to be his final days. After a few days Fitzgerald decides that he is in great danger by being out in the wilderness with such a small group and tries to kill Glass. Hawk stops him but then when he is calling to Jim for help Fitzgerald kills him. Fitzgerald then hides Hawk’s body from Jim (keep in mind that Glass saw the whole thing but is unable to tell Jim because he cannot speak due to his injuries). A little while later Jim returns not knowing where Hawk is.

Fitzgerald then lies to Jim and says that he saw a group of Native Americans and insists that they leave Glass and fend for themselves. Jim is hesitant at first because they did not give Glass a proper burial like they were instructed to. Fitzgerald then buries Glass alive and he and Jim take off.

After a little while Glass manages to dig himself out of his grave. He is still unable to walk so he begins to crawl around. Little by little he overcomes obstacle after obstacle and even floats down a river at one point when trying to avoid Native Americans. The majority of the film is Glass trying to get to the fort where the rest of the trappers are so that he can get revenge on Fitzgerald for killing his son.

Once Glass makes it to the fort he tells Captain Henry and the rest of the trappers what happened. Captain Henry informs Glass that Fitzgerald has recently vanished and that he is going to try and find him and bring him back for a trial. Obviously, Glass wants to join him. The two split up in their search and Henry ends up finding Fitzgerald, but is killed by him.

Glass finds Henry’s body and comes up with a clever trick to bring Fitzgerald out of hiding. The trick works and a fight ensues between Glass and Fitzgerald. The two men then stop fighting because they see a group of Native Americans. Fitzgerald then begins to encourage Glass to finally get his revenge. Glass does this in an unconventional way when he pushes Fitzgerald into the river. Fitzgerald then floats down to the Native Americans where he is killed by them.

In my opinion, I do not understand what all the buzz is about. I was not very impressed with the film and was pretty disappointed because it had been hyped up so much. My main issue with it was that the story dragged on way too much. I feel like over half of the movie was just Leonardo DiCaprio crawling around on the ground. However, I don’t exactly consider myself a movie critic so I will say that many people will probably have a different opinion about it than I did.

A trailer for the movie can be seen here.