The reality is that it doesn't. If anything it kind of sinks the movie for me; when you watch Apocalypse Now the absolute swirling madness of that production is there onscreen, in the performances, in the atmosphere. But it's a movie about madness, so it all works. When you watch The Revenant you're very aware that you're watching a stunt show, that you're watching a high-profile, highly-paid actor putting himself through some dares. When DiCaprio eats a raw bison liver he vomits, which the actor says was his true reaction to biting into the actual steaming organ. But here's the thing: would that have been mountain man Hugh Glass' reaction? Watching The Revenant is like watching Leonardo DiCaprio's Very Bad Vacation, not like watching the survival saga of a man born to the wild. There is certainly physical reality onscreen but I'm not sure there's emotional truth.Weirdly enough Tom Cruise's high profile M:I stunts feel like they have more truth to them if only because the character of Ethan Hunt is just Tom Cruise with a nom du spy, as far as we can tell. It's bizarre, but Cruise hanging off a plane in Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation has more honesty and meaning to it than every single discomfort suffered by DiCaprio in The Revenant.
