Hello, Jana here,

If there’s an actor that is fit for period pieces, it’s unarguably Leonardo DiCaprio. From ‘Titanic’ to ‘Gangs of New York’, ‘The Aviator’, ‘Django Unchained’, ‘The Great Gatsby’ and even ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ was about as 80’s of a movie as you can go. Now he’s signed onto star in ‘The Revenant’ written and directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (‘Babel’, ’21 Grams’), co-written by Mark L. Smith.

Adapted from the Michael Punke novel ‘The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge’. A man of many adventures, a fur trapper Hugh Glass, (DiCaprio) goes West in 1822 in the employ of Captain Andrew Henry to do some profitable fur trapping. He is mauled by a grizzly bear, and badly injured. Miraculously, he survives, but the terrain makes it impossible to carry him back. Henry tries, but eventually hires two mercenaries to simply stand watch and bury him. They abandon Glass, alone and defenseless, but unfortunately for them, he recovers. He resolves to hunt down the men who abandoned him.

This novel adaptation reminds me of another that is completed and will be releasing in 2014. The adaptation of Ron Rash’s novel, ‘Serena’, Rash’s novel deals with revenge in a spectacularly bloody was, as well. Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper team up again after stellar performances in ‘Silver Linings Notebook’ and ‘American Hustle’. Cooper plays George Pemberton and Lawrence, his wife, the titular ‘Serena’. A tale set in depression-era North Carolina where the Pemberton’s have a timber empire. Serena will do anything to make sure they succeed and if someone is crazy enough to wrong them the payback is brutal. This falls into the category of books to read before the flicks come out! I’ve read Serena, but am adding ‘The Revenant’ to my download list.