Tom Hardy: 10 Greatest movies of all time
By Rachel Roth
9. The Revenant
Original Release Date: December 25, 2015
Box Office Earnings: $533 million
Critical Reception: The film that famously awarded Leonardo DiCaprio his long-awaited Oscar. It received a well-rounded amount of critical praise for its performances, cinematography, and use of natural lighting. It won the Academy Award for Best Director for Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Best Actor for DiCaprio and Best Cinematography. Tom Hardy received the Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor but didn’t win.
About the Role: Taking on the role of the backstabbing John Fitzgerald who left a member of his own scouting party for dead, Hardy struts around like a wild-eyed animal in a heavy Southern American accent threatening just about everyone he can. While Leo grunts and crawls around for 156 minutes, Hardy proves once again how great of a chameleon he is.
I know this movie was designed to be DiCaprio’s big Oscar win, but personally, I feel Hardy stole the show. That Oscar was pretty much handed to him as an apology for robbing him so many times; What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Blood Diamond, The Departed, and Wolf of Wall Street. Sorry Leo, but Tom should’ve gotten the Oscar.
Simply the Best: Partially based on Michael Punke’s novel of the same name that was inspired by the 1915 poem “The Song of Hugh Glass”, which tells the story of frontiersman Hugh Glass when he was attacked by a grizzly bear and left for dead in 1823. The whole movie is a test from director Alejandro G. Iñárritu to see how much pain one man can endure, and how much the audience can handle before the brutality gives them frostbite.
In the middle of the cold wilderness, fur trapper Hugh Glass and his son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), are hunting with a group when they run into a number of obstacles, including a brutal grizzly attack that leaves Glass mortally wounded. Once Glass becomes too weak to travel, John Fitzgerald (Hardy) decides to kill him and then his son to keep all sides quiet, setting off a quest for revenge when Glass somehow survives.
The murder of Glass’s son Hawk was a fictional event made up for the movie. It’s unknown if Glass ever had any children, let alone a mixed-race child from a Pawnee woman. Historic accounts mention Glass being held hostage by a Pawnee tribe whom he lived with for years, during which it’s believed he married a Pawnee woman, but no children were ever mentioned.