WATCH: Leonardo DiCaprio in 'The Revenant'

MANILA, Philippines — In what the movie critics and cineastes consider his latest most powerful performance, Academy Award nominee Leonardo DiCaprio stars in a fully immersive and visceral cinematic experience in “The Revenant.”

It is directed, produced and co-written by Academy Award-winning director Alejandro Iñárritu. “The Revenant” also gathers a highly-pedigreed impressive cast that includes Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck, Paul Anderson, Kristoffer Joner, Joshua Burge and Duane Howard.   

Inspired by true events, DiCaprio plays the legendary Hugh Glass, a fur trapper in an epic adventure set in the unchartered 19th century American Frontier.

Based on author Michael Punke’s “The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge,” published in 2002 and is one of the most extensively researched accounts about, Glass’s mythology began in 1823, when he was among thousands joining the fur trade, a driving new force in the US economy. It was a time when many saw the wild as a spiritual void that demanded to be tamed and conquered by the steeliest of men.

So they poured into the unknown, plying unmapped rivers, disappearing into impossibly lush forests, seeking not only excitement and adventure but also profits, which is often in fierce competition with the Native tribes for whom these lands had long been home.

Many such men died anonymously, but Glass entered the annals of American folklore by flat-out refusing to die. His legend sparked after he faced one of the West’s most feared dangers:  a startled grizzly bear.  For even the most tested frontiersmen that should have been the end, but not for Glass.

In Iñárritu’s telling of the tale, a mauled Glass clings to life—then suffers a human betrayal that fuels him to continue at any cost. In spite of tremendous loss, Glass pulls himself from an early grave—clawing his way through a gauntlet of unknown perils and unfamiliar cultures on a journey that becomes not just a search for reckoning but for redemption.

As Glass moves through the frontier in turmoil, he comes to reject the urge for destruction that once drove him. He has become a “revenant” or the one returned from the dead.

“The Revenant' is an incredible journey through the harshest elements of an uncharted America," DiCaprio said about the film. "It’s about the power of a man’s spirit. Hugh Glass’s story is the stuff of campfire legends, but Alejandro uses that folklore to explore what it really means to have all the chips stacked against you, what the human spirit can endure and what happens to you when you do endure.”

“The Revenant” opens in Philippine cinemas this January 27 from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.