Leonardo DiCaprio had a formidable foe in Alejandro G. Inarritu's The Revenant, and I do not mean the bear, a CGI construct, that some rumor raped him. Throughout the entertaining Golden Globes Awards Ceremony last night, there were murmurings of his real opponent, played by Tom Hardy. Jonah Hill's cuddly bear head provided comedy that landed flat. DiCaprio's Hugh Glass was on a revenge mission that gave him super charged strength, and you could say that chasing Tom Hardy's John Fitzgerald provided the same fuel for DiCaprio's acting. Leo thanked Hardy who is a friend, but as all the actors in this movie in extreme outdoor conditions were bearded and encased in fur, it was hard to really see Tom Hardy, and many say, that's just the way he likes it.
One has to go to another Globe contender, director George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road, to glimpse this handsome action hero. In that movie, he's a good guy, helping Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) convey the five enslaved wives of Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) to the Vuvalinis, a tribe of matriarchs. En route to the Golden Globes last week, at STK Midtown, George Miller sat with Eve Ensler, the "Vagina Monologues" playwright, to discuss the feminist nature of this altogether thrilling road trip.
In The Revenant, Hardy is a villain, more so because in the act of affecting a me-first ethos, he goes against DiCaprio's appealing sense of family and love. Even his Golden Globe acceptance speech exuded his values in the earth, deploring those aspects of civilization that rob indigenous tribes, and make our resources vulnerable. Bravo
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