There’s a certain breed of movie—think Field of Dreams, The Shawshank Redemption, and Good Will Hunting—that boasts a rugged earnestness that brings men to tears and earns them a place in dude-cinema history. Heart of the Beast just might be the platonic ideal, pairing Brad Pitt and a German Shepherd in a tale of endurance, sacrifice, loyalty, and love.
Mixing manliness and sensitivity, it’s a survivalist adventure that won’t make anyone forget Jack London but may, by its conclusion, compel bros to reach for the nearest box of Kleenex.
“Somewhere in Alaska,” a woman driving along a rural road encounters an abandoned pooch in a camouflage vest. Flashing back one week, Heart of the Beast reveals the animal’s identity to be Odin, the beloved partner of James Belmont (Pitt), with whom he’s traveling in a prop plane through the snowy mountain wilderness.
His head on James’ lap, Odin gazes up at his master with the deepest of affection. After landing and setting up camp on the rocky shore, James shows he feels the same about the dog, laughing and joking as they pitch a tent and play in nearby fields.
With a beard that’s graying at the chin, arms covered in tats, and a baseball cap covering his closely shorn hair, James strikes a military-veteran pose, and his joyous time having Odin attack his protective guard-covered arm indicates that the canine served alongside him in the special forces. At night, Odin awakens from nightmares about their Iraq tours, and along with his prosthetic leg, it becomes apparent that he’s seen his fair share of Hell.
Spending time in the middle of nowhere is an obvious sign that James has as well, and that the two have retreated to the untamed world to escape (and cope with) their demons. Thus, James isn’t thrilled when they’re greeted by a stranger (J.K. Simmons).
Nonetheless, during an evening together, Simmons’ wanderer proves himself a kindred spirit to the duo, and the beers and laughs they enjoy are underscored by mutual understanding and respect for the traumas that drive people to venture into perilously remote places.
Director David Ayer (Harsh Times, Suicide Squad) has always been most comfortable in macho territory, and with Heart of the Beast—his second collaboration with Pitt following 2014’s Fury—he tones down the aggro bluster for a quieter and more contemplative portrait of male camaraderie. James and Odin are family, and from the start, Pitt and his companion sell their bedrock bond, with the latter obeying, whimpering at, and snuggling with the former like a true best friend, and Pitt reciprocating by talking to and treating him as a brother.
Odin is the only creature who understands what James has endured, and vice versa; if their dynamic is familiar, Heart of the Beast benefits from their convincingly intimate rapport. Working from Cameron Alexander’s script, Ayer attunes the film to his protagonists’ wavelength, including when they opt to move on and James, during the ensuing flight, suffers a heart attack that causes them to nose-dive.
Like a subsequent dip in a raging river and a showdown with ferocious beasts, this sequence is dramatized with maximum visual urgency and cacophonous sound design, and the film’s jolting calamities serve as welcome breaks from the generally unhurried action.
James and Odin are temporarily separated by the crash, but Heart of the Beast is a six-legger, and they’re soon reunited, with James—his hand perpetually clutching his chest to calm his bad ticker—nursing the dog back to health. Once they’re on their feet, the film transforms into a quest to reach safety, which lies more than fifty miles away. Trekking across demanding terrain is an arduous enterprise, and as befits such a fight against nature, it’s pockmarked with a variety of daunting obstacles, beginning with a run-in with a massive bear whose scarred nose suggests that he too has been through some wars.
Though Odin is played at all times by a real German Shepherd named Uber, the rest of Heart of the Beast’s animals are somewhat shoddy CGI creations that undercut the proceedings’ on-location realism. Those foes, however, are minor components of a film that’s all about Pitt and his face-licking buddy.
With most of its sparse dialogue spoken by the headliner to the verbally challenged Odin, Ayer is able to spend long stretches focusing on the nuts-and-bolts of their mission, be it hoisting supplies into trees (to keep them away from covetous intruders) or constructing makeshift shelters and splints from their sparse supplies. This lets him develop character through action rather than words, as well as via details like the Slayer stickers on James’ crates.
Heart of the Beast repeatedly batters the beleaguered James and Odin to generate suspense, and from the get-go, there’s an obvious sense that tragedy looms on the horizon. When it arrives, it feels too preordained and schematic to truly inspire waterworks. Even so, Pitt’s performance—which balances wounded stoicism with demonstrative compassion—is robust and charismatic, and his closeness with Uber is suitably moving, thanks in part to the dog’s collection of unaffected reactions to his human compatriot.
In its closing passages, Heart of the Beast strains too hard for pathos, first with a scene embellished with the Northern Lights and then with a prolonged monologue—set to a mawkish flashback montage—that features just about as much chitchat as the rest of the film combined. Having already engendered empathy for the twosome, Ayer figuratively puts his finger on the scale to try to devastate them emotionally. The effort invariably has the opposite effect, spoiling what should have been a bittersweet finale.
As a result, Heart of the Beast never quite nails the tough-yet-syrupy recipe that turns certain movies into endlessly rewatchable guy’s-guy classics. Still, it gets close enough to that territory to at least warrant consideration for membership in that niche (and, to certain moviegoers, revered) club.
And who knows, perhaps with a few more cable-TV rewatches on Saturday afternoons, it’ll sneak its way into that hallowed pantheon.
