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In 1823, Hugh Glass acts as a guide for Captain Andrew Henry’s party of trappers through unorganized U.S. territory (later the Dakotas). While he and his half-Pawnee son Hawk are hunting, the company's camp is attacked by a hostile "Ree" war party. Glass recommends that the survivors travel on foot to their outpost, Fort Kiowa, as traveling downriver will make them vulnerable to another attack. Upon docking the boat alongside the river, the crew stashes the pelts they were able to secure during the Arikara attack close to shore. The matter is further complicated when Glass, while scouting, stumbles across a mother grizzly bear and her cubs. Although he manages to kill the bear, Glass is left with severe injuries and is near death. The belligerent trapper John Fitzgerald suggests that killing Glass would be a mercy, to which Henry agrees, but is unable to pull the trigger. Instead, Henry offers money for anyone to stay behind with Glass in case he recovers or dies on his own. When the only volunteers are Hawk and the naïve youth Jim Bridger, Fitzgerald agrees to stay in order to recoup his losses from the abandoned pelts.
After the other trappers leave, Fitzgerald attempts to smother Glass, but is stopped by Hawk. When Hawk tries to call for help, a panicked Fitzgerald stabs him. The next morning, Fitzgerald wakes Bridger and tells him that a party of Arikara are surrounding them. After departing, Bridger becomes suspicious of Fitzgerald, who admits that he lied. When Fitzgerald and Bridger meet up with Captain Henry at Fort Kiowa, Fitzgerald informs him that they were unable to save Glass and that Hawk had gone missing. Glass, meanwhile, refuses to die. He hauls himself from a shallow grave dug by Bridger and begins his arduous journey through the wilderness. He performs crude self-surgery to heal his wounds while attempting to elude the Arikara, who are still in pursuit. The Arikara chief, Elk Dog, is searching for his daughter, Powaqa, who was kidnapped by white men.
After narrowly escaping the Arikara again, Glass encounters a Pawnee refugee named Hikuc who warily allows the wounded man to share bison meat. The two men gradually form a bond as they travel. After a hallucinogenic experience, Glass awakens to discover Hikuc has been hanged by a group of French traders camped nearby. Glass discovers they are responsible for Powaqa’s abduction, and he manages to get the drop on a trapper as he rapes her. Powaqa castrates her rapist and flees while Glass steals a horse. The next morning, Glass is ambushed by the Arikara and is driven over a cliff.
A desperate survivor of the French party staggers into Fort Kiowa, where he is questioned about the attack on his men. He reveals he is carrying his attacker’s canteen (which Bridger immediately recognizes as belonging to Glass). Reasoning that Hawk might have been the one to carry the canteen, Bridger and Henry gather a search party. Fitzgerald, knowing that Glass is the only person who could’ve been in possession of the flask, empties the outpost’s payroll safe and flees before his crimes can be revealed. The search party finds an exhausted Glass, and an enraged Henry orders Bridger to be taken into custody. When the party returns to the fort, they find that Fitzgerald has fled.
After Glass vouches that Bridger was deceived into abandoning him, he and Henry set out in pursuit of Fitzgerald. When the two men split up to pick up signs of Fitzgerald's trail, Fitzgerald ambushes and shoots Henry. Glass arrives on the scene and fashions a decoy by dressing Henry's corpse in his own coat and propping it on his horse in order to pose as the dead Henry. Fitzgerald takes the bait and shoots the decoy, but when he arrives to check on the body, he realizes his mistake just as Glass springs his trap and shoots Fitzgerald in the arm. Glass pursues Fitzgerald to a river bank, where the two men engage in a brutal fight. Glass gains the upper hand and is about kill Fitzgerald, but instead throws him into the water, which carries him downstream. Elk Dog, with Powaqa, drag Fitzgerald from the bank and kill him. The Arikara pass Glass, sparing him. Heavily wounded, and with his quest for revenge at an end, Glass retreats into the mountains, where he suffers from a hallucination in which his deceased wife smiles at him before disappearing into the woods.
