It’s hard to evaluate a film where I liked a lot of aspects but still it did not convince me in its entirety.
It’s not the first time a thing like that happens with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
Trying to perform an ''objective'' analysis I can say:
1) The photography is simply amazing.
2) The direction is always a high level one when it comes to Iñárritu. Here he does not propose a (fake) global sequence-shot like in Birdman but he alternates masterful long-takes with intense close-ups, confirming his great talent
3) The editing is remarkable
4) The acting (which hardly ever interests me) is excellent, especially the antagonist (Tom Hardy) works fine, so when you have a good antagonist and a protagonist as DiCaprio (at his best) the job can’t help being good
5) The plot proposes many issues, all meaningful (father-son relationship, racism, violated rights of Native Americans, the struggle for survival, Nature, solidarity between ethnic groups in conflict, revenge), perhaps too many to be condensed into a two and a half hour film.
2) The direction is always a high level one when it comes to Iñárritu. Here he does not propose a (fake) global sequence-shot like in Birdman but he alternates masterful long-takes with intense close-ups, confirming his great talent
3) The editing is remarkable
4) The acting (which hardly ever interests me) is excellent, especially the antagonist (Tom Hardy) works fine, so when you have a good antagonist and a protagonist as DiCaprio (at his best) the job can’t help being good
5) The plot proposes many issues, all meaningful (father-son relationship, racism, violated rights of Native Americans, the struggle for survival, Nature, solidarity between ethnic groups in conflict, revenge), perhaps too many to be condensed into a two and a half hour film.
I think what works the least is that Iñárritu’s directing style does not go hand in hand with the narration: they are not symbiotic and you can perceive the dystonia.
To give an example in order to understand you can think of Audioslave: an extraordinary guitarist (Tom Morello) and a terrific singer (Chris Cornell) have never really worked out as a group, never reaching the level of RATM or Soundgarden anyway.
It is therefore a missed masterpiece, but it works just fine at a movie theatre
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