Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Hugh Glass, who is mauled by a mama grizzly bear while out with a hunting party of fur trappers, leaving him barely clinging to life with severe trauma and a plethora of injuries.  Glass's teenage son Hawk (a fictional character added for dramatic effect), who was the son of a murdered Pawnee lover, won't leave his side, though that also leaves him largely unprotected among a group of men with their own prejudices, and their own reasons to hate the natives of the area, especially John Fitzgerald, who thinks Glass is a lost cause that's just dead weight on getting back to civilization that should be put out of his misery.  The misery for Glass doesn't end there, as he's eventually left for dead (hence the title), committed to dragging himself out of his shallow grave, crawling high and low, through rocks, rivers and snow, in order to try to right the wrongs that have been perpetrated against him.