Review: 'Heart of the Beast' is sturdy wilderness survival drama that gives Brad Pitt a gorgeous scene partner - a good dog named Odin
Director David Ayer’s “Heart of the Beast” is a wilderness survival drama where the journey matters far more than the destination — because through it we see the enduring friendship between a man and his canine companion.
It takes time for us to learn about James Belmont (played by Brad Pitt) and his dog, Odin (played by four dogs, mostly one named Uber) — we don’t even learn his last name until the final scene, but that doesn’t matter a lot. In the spare, tough script by music-video director Cameron Alexander, James and Odin have flown James’ seaplane to a remote spot in Alaska to do some hunting and fishing. The only conversation comes when an aged kayaker (J.K. Simmons) comes along and shares James’ and Odin’s camp, and a couple of Belgian brown ales from James’ cooler, for a night.
Through that conversation, Alexander and Ayer give us just enough exposition to deliver the basics. James is a former Green Beret, an Army Special Forces sergeant major, who went through some hellacious combat with Odin, a combat dog who now has a prosthetic front limb and titanium teeth as a result of his war injuries. Odin and James also both have bouts of PTSD at night, but they get through them together.
Flying back from their adventure, James suffers a heart attack and the small Cessna crashes through trees and into a lake. James manages to swim to safety and find Odin, who was thrown from the plane before it hit water. James battles through his cardiac issues, thanks to a bottle of aspirin he recovered from the sunken plane, and eventually he and Odin start hiking the approximately 60 miles through some beautiful Alaskan wilderness (filmed in New Zealand) to get to the nearest road.
Ayer, who directed Pitt in the 2014 World War II tank drama “Fury,” stages some tough, muscular scenes of James and Odin crossing raging rivers, skidding down mossy hillsides and enduring more hardships than a healthy body probably could outside of a movie. The plausibility of Alexander’s script isn’t the highest, but the cinematic vision of the journey certainly is.
Ayer’s main mission in “Heart of the Beast” is to celebrate the bond between Pitt’s wounded ex-warfighter and his hard-nosed, traumatized dog. Pitt holds up his end with a gritty performance that prizes action and gesture above words. Pitt’s best acting choice is to let the dogs playing Odin take the attention, which they do beautifully. Whatever the movie’s faults, there’s no argument that Odin is a good dog.
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‘Heart of the Beast’
★★★
Opens Friday, September 25, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for violence, peril, bloody/injury images and some language. Running time: 101 minutes.