This Brad Pitt survival thriller deserves a treat.
Funny thing. I think I just reviewed a movie with a pilot and his dog called “The Dog Stars” last month. While I liked its sense of thrills, I thought its story sold itself short, and that’s a shame considering that it was directed by Ridley Scott. And a month later, we have the new David Ayer movie “Heart of the Beast,” which is the better version considering that it knows how to handle the genre of a man and his dog and uses the right actors of both species to portray them. Which in this case is Brad Pitt and a former mountain search-and-rescue German Shepherd named Uber.
Pitt plays a retired Army Special Forces vet named James Belmont, who spends a lot of time with his combat dog Odin (Uber) playing and flying around in the Alaskan wilderness (actually filmed in Queenstown, New Zealand). The dog lost his leg and tooth in battle, while the aging man is suffering from heart attacks, and periodically, they both suffer from PTSD. And because James suffers from a heart attack on flight and lies his head on the controls, they crash land in the wilderness. At the very least, he has the supplies to see him and his dog within the next few days.
To me, there hasn’t been a single good movie directed by Ayer since “Fury,” which also starred Pitt. “Suicide Squad,” “The Beekeeper,” and “A Working Man” have all tried to glamorize their villains with make-up, elaborate sets, and props to try to make them look cool, and their stories never left up to the imagination. And I didn’t have the temperament to see “Bright” or “The Tax Collector.” But “Heart of the Beast” is a departure from those films. It shows that Ayer doesn’t need to make his characters look and act cool or to push production values at every scene. He needs to have some strong character development, an emotional weight, consistent thrills, and great performances from both species. And he has already proven his talents before.
Pitt continues to meet well with age as an actor, and he puts a lot of effort into easing his emotions, while Uber makes his acting debut as a movie dog and a character. And I assure you he still has all four of his legs. We also get a cameo from JK Simmons as another vet, who meets the main characters in the woods for a campfire and beer or two. And rest assured, the movie chooses not to make the Simmons character into a bad guy. It would have been too cliched and perfunctory for such a survival tale like this.
Even though the film could have been a little longer for the sake of its narrative, which could have used a little more time in its flashbacks, “Heart of the Beast” is a survival movie that knows the man and man’s best friend in circumstances. They’re b both war heroes who need to escape from whatever Hell they were put through, and they find themselves prioritizing their situation in the woods. Funny, I was just thinking back to “Dog,” which starred Channing Tatum as a selfish US Army Ranger and an aggressive war dog. And I can imagine if they were both lost in the woods, they would probably act like Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien’s characters in “Send Help.” “Dog” was a funny and good-hearted movie in the sense, while “Heart of the Beast” is thrilling and good-hearted in the nature of the concept.
You know what? Something else hit me. 6 years ago, we had “Call of the Wild,” which starred Harrison Ford and a CGI dog in the wilderness, and I was criticizing that film by saying: “I was expecting that dog to make himself a dry martini.” “Heart of the Beast” uses a human and a real dog, and they both have human connections that speaks with the right convictions. That’s a good boy.
