I went to watch this film the week before the Academy Awards, right in the season in which Leo DiCaprio was being showered with plaudits.
Indeed, Leo really 'suffers' for his art. He is the centrepiece of the film. Having enjoyed Baz Luhrmann's 'Romeo + Juliet', I always knew Leo was capable of this type of role. It is his intensity that carried me through this film. His physical impairment gives him a real chance to deliver his lines through a constricted throat and gritted teeth that are as constricted and gritted as the best of them.
Tom Hardy seems to have forgotten the comments about his incoherent Bane in 'The Dark Knight Rises'. He is difficult to understand at times as he chews down on the scenery, left, right and centre. There is very little nuance, or light and shade in his performance.
But there is plenty of light and shade to appreciate in the setting. The photography is exquisite, capturing the awesome majesty and true splendour of the stunning landscape. Apparently, filming was restricted to a short 90-minute window at the end of each day to capture the light in the way desired by the director and director of photography. Furthermore, in the encounter between Leo and the character that injures him so badly, there are no tell-tale signs of the CGI. The movie magic is splendidly done. Like Leo, the audience smells and tastes his rival. A shame then that the physical damage done to him in this encounter seems to repair itself so unrealistically quickly.
This is the third film in the past weeks in which I have seen Domhnall Gleeson, and his range is exciting me increasingly. I did a double-take when I saw him, unable to initially accept this was the same man I had seen previously in two very different roles (as General Hux [Star Wars Episode 7] and Tim [About Time]). Will Poulter is also terrific as a supporting character. He offers a very good insight to a callow youthfulness, easily led astray when duped by an older, nasty piece of work, and the eventual realisation of what his naivety has cost him and others.
There are two early action sequences that are incredibly well assembled. The dramatic opening instantly draws you into the film, and the world that its characters inhabit. It is visceral in its capture of the reality of battle. Several breath-taking set pieces punctuate the film. They are astonishingly executed.
However, the film is too long. It could easily lose an hour. I have already said that the action sequences punctuate what is a looonngg, drawn-out story. The audience is repeatedly beaten over the head with a bloodied stump by a director desperate for us to recognise that Leo is surviving incredible hardships. Did you hear me Oscar? INCREDIBLE HARDSHIPS!
Several of the plot twists could have been dropped without us missing out on this message. The dream sequences did not really add to the narrative - if anything they stalled the film even further. As everything seemed to progress at such a ponderous rate, I felt that yes I was experiencing the ordeals meted out on Leo, but I was doing so whilst suffering my own ordeal of having to see another set back befall him as he slowly made his way to the inevitable climax.
As if this is not enough, we are bludgeoned repeatedly with a lost daughter sub-plot, the end-of-film resolution to which could not be more telegraphed if the film makers tried. And then of course there is the barefaced dig about "Who really are the savages here?"
No, in shouting so loudly at Oscar, there is very little subtlety in evidence. And, to top it all off, the final frame is inopportune; I would have liked to have seen what happened next to the protagonist, how they dealt with the psychological aftermath that their uncertain and bereft future held.
It seems that the timing of my cinema visit was highly appropriate - this felt a very 'worthy’ film; it screams 'Pick me, Oscar'. But I personally shall be looking out for some of its award rivals in the coming weeks and months.