I thought
The Revenant was good. I looked up whatever I could find about it some time back.
Regarding that shot at the bear, I've seen a couple of historical references to "self priming" flintlocks. Essentially, this just means the touch hole is big enough to allow some powder from the main charge to leak out. John Palliser recommended "...
a light self-priming flint gun..." for running buffalo, as it saved the trouble of priming while on the back of a running horse. It was customary to plug a leaky touch-hole with a feather if you didn't want it to leak. So, if we didn't see Leo refresh his priming before he shot the bear, maybe he had a historically accurate self-priming rifle.
I think the director's vision for this movie was to film it all outdoors in natural light, which he did, except for the indoor scenes at the fort. No studio "green screens." That was real snow and ice, and it really was cold, although the actual historical bear attack on Hugh Glass took place in the month of August, 1823. I don't know why they elected to make this a winter movie.
I've never seen a grizzly bear attack anything, although I did watch the John West salmon ad (YouTube video
right here. Well worth watching... Glass could have taken a lesson from this fisherman...). I thought the bear mauling scene in
The Revenant was pretty convincing.
One thing I did not get was the significance of the hogs roaming the burned out Arikara village. I didn't think the Indians kept hogs, nor do I know of any references to wild hogs or domestic swine kept by any white folks in the Arikara neighborhood. Also, I could have done without the US Army attack on the Pawnee village, where Glass' wife was killed. The Pawnees raided some emigrant trains and were sometimes kind of a nuisance to travelers and homesteaders before the War Between the States, and there might have been some minor punitive skirmishes, but the Pawnees were never at war with the United States. They are cultural and linguistic kin to the Arikaras, but the two nations are distinct. I think the director may have gotten the lines blurred between them. The Pawnees did suffer terrible losses in a smallpox epidemic in 1831, which was after the Hugh Glass versus grizzly event, but I think they could have worked that into the story instead of the totally fictitious attack on the Pawnees by the US Army.
Overall, though, I thought it was good, and they went to much greater effort than is typical to get the clothes and weapons as accurate as they could, although a lot of the "guns" were actually prop guns made of urethane foam, realistically painted. Most of these were sold at auction some time after the movie was released. This is one of them, the prop rifle carried by Lucan Haas:
I also liked the fact that they hired American Indian and First Nations people, many of whom were not professional actors, to play the native roles. The reservations are typically economically depressed, and I'm sure that brought in some much needed cash, as well as giving some of the people opportunities for professional development. That's good. The scenery was spectacular.
Best regards,
Notchy Bob