Oscar worthy: Leonardo DiCaprio earns Academy Award favouritism with star turn in The Revenant

SURVIVAL is almost an act of vengeance in this Western. Leonardo DiCaprio’s character cheats the grim reaper so many times it is unclear whether he is man or ghost.

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SURVIVAL is almost an act of vengeance in this Western, set at the last outpost of civilisation. It is a cold and unforgiving place where man is never more than a heartbeat away from his basest animal instincts.

Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Birdman, 21 Grams) has always been fascinated by that slippery moment when life hangs by a thread.

As The Revenant’s title suggests, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, legendary frontiersman Hugh Glass, cheats the grim reaper so many times, it is unclear whether he is man or ghost.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass in a scene from film The Revenant.

The scene in which he is mauled by a bear — an act so intimate and violent some critics have compared it to rape — is, of course, the show-stopper.

But the determination with which Glass hauls himself out of the shallow grave his hunting partners have dug for him gains an intense potency.

More poetic is the sequence in which his lifeless body is pummelled by the seething white water of a river.

And, then there is his rebirth from the gut of a horse.

Glass’s bloody-minded refusal to roll over and die is driven by his desire to avenge his son. But it’s also deeper than that.

The frontier is where the rule of law is tenuous and where duty, honour and mateship are soon jettisoned as unnecessary ballast.

The cast and crew endured beautiful, but brutal, conditions. Picture: AP

DiCaprio’s performance is all the more impressive since he conveys this almost without words — grunts make up the majority of his dialogue.

2016 could well be the year the 41-year-old actor finally bags an Oscar. Despite stiff competition, not least from Eddie Redmayne as The Danish Girl, the five-time nominee must surely be the favourite on the back of his extraordinary body of work (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond and Wolf of Wall Street).

Experts are predicting this will be the year DiCaprio finally bags an Oscar. Picture: AP

His carnivorous performance is well complemented by Tom Hardy’s crazed trapper.

Shot against a jaw-dropping natural backdrop — in places so remote the cast and crew spent almost half their day travelling to and from them, Inarritu’s overarching vision successfully transports his audience to another time and place.

An extraordinary achievement.

Opens Thursday.

THE REVENANT

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson

Rating: MA15+

Running time: 156 minutes

Verdict: Comeback

Score: Four-and-a-half stars

Originally published as Oscar worthy: Leonardo DiCaprio earns Academy Award favouritism with star turn in The Revenant