(This review may contain spoilers).
I was immediately struck by this film when I saw the trailer. Having seen it, even though I knew a lot of the storyline already, I felt it still managed to draw me into the events of the film.
I did think that Glass was a bit too harsh towards his son, but the relationship between him and Hawk came across really well. I did have some issue that I’d taken my friend who’s blind to see the film… and the very first lines were subtitled. Fortunately, while that did repeat throughout the film, the majority of it was in English, which allowed me to concentrate on describing the movie for my friend.
There was a lot of violence and gore in this movie and I do have to doubt the realistic nature of many of the things that happened. I didn’t like Fitzgerald at all in the movie, but I did feel a lot of empathy for Bridger. While I think he made some mistakes, I could understand the reasoning behind not being honest about the situation.
I thought it was good to have the opportunity to see the different groups/characters moving, though I was a bit confused about how Captain Andrew Henry got all of the men to the fort only seconds after a scene where they looked like they were trapped.
There were quite a few sad scenes in this film, though I thought it was good to get more details on Glass’ life. While I thought Captain Andrew Henry did make some errors in judgement, he did come across as a good man… and I thought he tried to do right by all of his men. I was a bit confused about what they were doing with all of the pelts, but apart from that, I did find this movie fairly easy to follow.
I did recognise quite a few of the actors in this movie and I thought most of them brought real emotion to the roles. I found the movie really intense to watch, despite the probably inaccuracies, and although I don’t think I’d like to see it again soon, I’d suggest watching it if you are on the fence. Just keep in mind that it does contain a lot of violence and gore… as well as one potentially triggering scene.
