The opening scenes of the new trailer for The Revenant are reminiscent of The Last of the Mohicans, with a band of white animal trappers barely fending off a Native American war party. But from there on in, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s star-studded period epic is pure old-school Eastwood Western. Leonardo DiCaprio is Hugh Glass, the leader of the frontiersman whose struggle against a growing mutiny is complicated when he’s mauled by a grizzly bear — a scene depicted in awesome detail.
His injuries allow John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) to take over, and that includes murdering’s Glass’s “half-breed son” right in front of him and abandoning Glass in a shallow grave to die. “We did what we had to do,” Hardy lies to his boss (Domhnall Gleeson) back in civilization. “He was buried right.”
Au contraire. Glass is coming for revenge, for vengeance. As he says, “I ain’t afraid of dying anymore. I done it already.”
The Revenant, which is already legendary for its difficult and contentious cold-weather production, opens in theaters on Dec. 25.
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