Review: "The Revenant" is yet another snowbound thriller

"The Revenant" R
The guy who directed Birdman directs a DiCaprio and Hardy thriller on a snowy mountain in the 1820s in The Revenant.

These fur trappers are going about with their catch of furs, and the gory mess of having skinned hides around their camp, when the local Indians attack the camp and try to dispatch them with arrows. The have flint lock rifles and knives and axes. The men escape to a boat where they argue about abandoning the boat down river to avoid the French trappers and more of the Indians.

DeCaprio plays a guide who has a half Indian son, which the other crewmen find disgusting, and they attempt to berate him frequently. During a tracking excursion on land, he is attacked and mauled by a bear and is later rescued, but is clearly near death.

The trapper leader decides to split the force and let Hard's character stay with the wounded guy, but he would rather just cut and run. So he arranges the death of the son while his trainee is off scouting, and then buries DeCaprio's character alive. He convinced his man to move on.

While the men wander back into the edge of the frontier, near the army fort, they keep quiet about what happened out there.

The lost scout guy then somehow crawls out of the grave, doesn't freeze in snow, and pulls himself by his sheer will about trying to recover. Keep in mind he has been thoroughly mauled and has claw gashes all over his back, and his right foot is twisted backwards, and his leg is broken, and one arm is mauled, and one shoulder.

Through the course of probably a week, the trappers all reach the base, while the lost man recovers miraculously thanks to his own survival skills somehow, and apparently Wolverine like healing factors, and Indian magic too (a healing lodge or something a native builds for him). He also spends a night in a fallen dead horse's belly.

Then it's back to the camp to try and get his revenge on those who abandoned him.

Oscar bait, probably, for the leads.

The actual story of the pioneers that inspired the legend in the movie that is based on a book can be found online. Apparently Hugh Glass was a dramatized figure similar to folks like Paul Bunyun and Daniel Boone and his exploits in 1823 were loosely based on an actual person.

The movie and book differ in that the leg breaking happened a full series of months before, and he got it fixed, and the bear attack happened the following summer.

Fitzgerald did leave him for dead, but the repayment is not as it was in the movie. In the account from hearsay sent to a Pennsylvania paper in 1823, and other sources, Fitzgerald in fact escaped never to be caught, and his young ward is left to take the blame, but Glass refuses to kill him.

In all accounts until the Revenanat book from the early 200os, there is no half Indian son. He is not in any previous version. This means that the author and the movie director merely wanted to have a stronger message, when there was really none.

Also the stuff that seemed silly and impossible made more sense in the hearsay stories, from lore, in that it wasn't several days of him in the snow, and he wasn't totally destroyed by the bear. He was just messed up. Then it made more sense he could recover on his miles long crawl or hike, and he didn't just fix his leg somehow or his back. 

Unlike Crockett though, he was not so glamorous in lore, but was just out to survive.

Review by Adam Browne

Review: "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi"

 "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi" R
You might think this film a combination of all things Michael Bay, action, explosions, fake drama, ham fisted action, chiseled heroes and sneaky villains, but he's trying for something better. It is not what Fox thinks, and has little to say about Hillary Clinton.

I've attached parts of my earlier article from 2014 during the 15 million dollar hearings on this fiasco. The hearings found nothing of substance to accuse Hillary Clinton of politics about this. Nothing. (This site is not partisan and is not being paid). 

"Four years ago on Sept. 11, 2012, there was a terrorist attack on a CIA consulate in Benghazi, Libya." Kat said in an article, "The country had just been routed in a civil war that outed their previous leader, Qaddafi. During a 12 hour period at night there were protest about the war, not a video, and some militants took arms and invaded the building. They got a rocket launcher and some mortar shells and cannon, and guns and went inside and killed some people, including an ambassador and some operatives. Then they torched the building and fled into the crowd." 

The film makes this into a typical Michael Bay action picture, blowing the whole thing up like it's some kind of super secret mega base and there are kick butt military fighters on both sides, with Hollywood grizzled beards and tough looks all around. 

It has so many explosions and gotcha moments it is like watching some weird hybrid of Transformers 2 meets Pain and Gain and The Island. His other movies mark his technique of let's blow stuff up and call it art. Let's call it a message when merely people stop to talk. Armageddon was deeper. 

"Several senate hearings were held on this case to try and identify who was to blame for not giving enough security to the 'embassy', which was actually a 'consulate'." Kat said, "It is interesting to note that the media, including Fox leading the charge, kept calling it an embassy. Also note that they never once brought up the 13 attacks on other such buildings during the years of the Bush administration, and the deaths of dozens of Americans then."

This barely comes up in the movie. They have some of the rhetoric from the period, news clips mainly, and Fox news supporters present, but also equally they have some CNN news in there and balance out some of it. It never takes a stance that it's a difference that matters. After all, we have to get back to more explosions!

"It happened to be an election year, and the Republicans wanted to find some way of making President Obama look bad." Kat said, "This was the perfect storm for them. Here was an incident where security was apparently held back from going in, and then a video about anti Islamic tendencies was blamed."

Some of this does make it into the movie, but whereas it is glossed over newsreel here, it is nothing like say a film like Zero Dark Thirty or Black Hawk Down. Bay is not about to take a side and comes off a little conservative, but the finer points could be glossed over by either side. Bay is no Oliver Stone. But you can't expect that from an action director. It does have plenty of action, more so than the actual fight in Libya. 

"Lax in security and armed guards was known in Libya during the civil war." Kat said, "It was not overnight. It was not because Obama told Clinton to stand down. They just didn't have security there. The rebels had sacked all the security and police so they were all gone. The ones that were supposed to be guarding that compound were actually in on the attack and fled."

The false orders are addressed in the movie as though they were commonly pointed out, as was the video, and the stand down, all of which were actually a muddled mess and really not a conspiracy. The movie copies the narrative from a book based on '13 Hours'. It is not 13 hours long. 

"The video was anti Islamic and it was reported on FOX that is was the video, and every other news media followed suit." Kat said, "They were just reading from the talking points. Even Rice, who was the temporary leader of state, said it was the video. She had heard it on Fox. Granted she should have not said that had someone told her not to. The video was likely a convenient blind to hide the laz in security at a CIA stronghold, not a lie to get election stuff out of the way."

The movie only references the video and does not go into it like Fox diid, and is currently crowing about in the news cycle. 'Innocence of Muslim' had caused a riot somewhere else that week, so they just assumed it was the cause. The Bay movie doesn't go into it as much as Fox claims. This is because Fox started it in the first place, via a wire to MSNBC and to Rice. 

"Was there real time news from the events?" Kat said, "No. The drones were not in the air until after the fire started. This was a good half hour later. This is also when the three agents from the "13 Hours" book were on the scene, adding details that weren't there before they arrived, like that they were told to stand down and went anyway."

"A half hour later, three operatives from the mission, as implied in the second book that carries their names, went in against orders." Kat said, "It could be their commander thought the incident too dangerous and didn't want them killed. Maybe. It was not a stand down. It was more like a be careful or you might get killed."

This is in the Bay film as a stand down order and is the most speculative and wrong part because it never occurred. Since then, the acting general and the hearings concluded no such order was given, not even for safety reasons. He just makes them off as kick butt American heroes going into battle! It's GI Joe. It' not what actually happened at all. You expect Cobra Commander to jump out in the end and hiss at them when they arrive too late. 

"A carrier was deployed during the fighting and a few teams arrived hours late." Kat said, "Granted they should have been there within minutes, but they had bad intelligence. They did not have real time drone or satellite intelligence until a half hour into it. If they had arrived earlier, they might have done something, or been killed."

It is not likely the carrier would have arrived in time, even if they had jets or choppers. Bay makes it look like they have all those things and can go in screaming 'F... Yeah, America!' It's kind of like that scene in Bad Boys and that one in Transformers. Making it so loud and explosive kind of makes it almost seem like he was making a GI Joe movie, really. That could be entertaining, and ironically makes the alleged heroes look like action figures. 

Although this movie critic is not paid, not in the military, and knows nothing about covert ioerations unless they're in movies, this seems a little far fetched. 

How did these alleged brave men all happen to get a book and themn a movie based on herarsay and intelligence? How did they get clearance to even discuss the nature of their mission to a news station, much less to several, and then to Michael Bay? He can keep classified data, it seems. Yeah. The only thing that makes sense if they all made it up, and over blew their importance in all this to sell books and movie rights. 

Bay is the man for the director's job then, as it is like watching someone imitating a better movie. It's neither horrible or overly nuts, but it is propaganda and it fuels both sides with testosterone rush, like his other flicks. 

I will have to go watch Transformers again soon. 

What you will hear since the fiasco is that somehow this is the worst tragedy ever, even though the GOP conveniently ignores the whole wars aboard thing, and the hundreds of thousands lost in 11 years of trying to bring democracy to the Middle East, not to mention many more wounded.  Libya was merely an incident in 2012 and not the biggest ever. Yes, 4 people died that were ours, but it is ludicrous to compare that to anything remotely similar during the previous administration. On the original Sept. 11, there were 3,000 people lost. They try to compare that somehow, in Libya. 

Review by Kal Kat