In โHeart of the Beast,โ Brad Pitt does something a lot of actors might not quite bring off in a man-and-his-dog-in-the-wilderness saga: He gives a true performance. His character, James Belmont, is a retired Special Forces officer who has been through a great many deployments. (There are combat flashbacks to what looks like Afghanistan, though the war isnโt named.) In the opening sequence, heโs piloting a small plane through the spectacular Alaska mountains, his trusty German Shepherd, Odin, by his side. Odin is battle-scarred, with titanium teeth and only three legs (he wears a prosthetic one). Heโs a combat dog, raised by James since he was a puppy; having been through so much war together, the two have an animal closeness you can just about touch. Pitt shows you the love and trust James and the dog share, and also the veteran James is: alert, grizzled, taciturn, resourceful, a little too content to be by himself โ but heโs that way because war has formed him, and how many others would understand?
โHeart of the Beastโ opens on a note of disquiet: Odin, standing alone in the middle of a road, as a young woman (Anna Lambe) approaches in a pick-up truck. So something happened along the way. The film then flashes back a week, to when the Alaska trip starts off as a bit of low-key R&R. For a while, we revel in the roughneck pleasure of it all. The grandeur of the skies and forests and lakes and snow-capped cliffs (the film was shot in New Zealand), the surreal quietude, the hiking through the woods, the serenity of pitching camp on a shore under the stars, the coziness of the campfire, the cooler of Belgian ale, the catching and eating of fresh salmon, the pouring of steaming coffee out of a tin pot โ we could almost be watching a biopic about the Marlboro Man. All thatโs missing is the lantern.
Pitt, in a beard and a buzzcut and camouflage shirt and aviator shades, with a compass tattoo under his left ear, is playing a man out of Hemingway by way of L.L. Bean. His James is so centered in this wilderness that he makes us feel at home too. Itโs a telling feature of the movie that the character exhibits no overt war trauma; thereโs almost a political layer to it, an undermining of the inevitability of the damaged vet. At the same time, you feel Jamesโ war experience in the very premise of the film: his craving for isolation. Early on, he meets a stranger who looks like an old prospector (heโs played by J.K. Simmons), but after a few friendly minutes of light banter the stranger goes on his way. The only buddy in this movie is the dog.
If itโs a surprise to see Brad Pitt holding down the center of a wilderness drama this tranquil and wholesome, the other surprise of โHeart of the Beastโ is that it was directed by David Ayer, a specialist in reckless tales of urban violence and underworld nihilism (โThe Beekeeper,โ โThe Tax Collector,โ โEnd of Watchโ). In a dramatic change of pace, Ayer and Pitt (both producers on the film) have teamed up to make something that isnโt so far removed, in form and spirit, from an old-school Disney movie. That said, the real surprise of โHeart of the Beastโ is how well-made it is. Ayer draws on his logistical talent, and even his taste for violence, to craft a tale of survival that makes us feel the pain, the fear and the hardship, the stakes of what it takes to battle nature.
We know something is going to go wrong, and without giving too much away, let me just say that James and Odin wind up stranded, without the plane, 58 miles from the nearest road. To survive, theyโll have to trek to that road, through the forest and the mountains and the plains โ and since they start off by covering 8 to 10 miles a day, the journey seems eminently doable. They have supplies, and they can forage for food. But in this saga of man vs. nature, nature is not forgiving. The first obstacle is a grizzly bear, which approaches out of nowhere. The beast has been created with digital effects, which is the sort of thing that critics tend to pick at, but Iโm interested in how scary and convincing the encounter is, and in this case the answer is: plenty. Ayer stages it with an awesomely meticulous danger.
There are howling wolves. Thereโs a cliff that joins to the one across the white-water river below with a bridge made of two tree trunks. Thereโs a treacherous fall through the rapids. There is bone popping out of skin. Throughout, Brad Pitt projects a tensile strength, and a survivorโs moxie, thatโs heroic but never superhuman. We see the physical anguish he refuses, and how the accumulation of wounds, even as he shakes them off, start to stack up. At one point, he thinks Odin is gone from this world, and when that turns out to be not the case, he weeps with gratitude.
Thereโs a way to sum up โHeart of the Beast,โ and thatโs by saying, โThis is a terrific performance โ and Brad Pitt is extremely good too.โ Because Uber, the dog who plays Odin, does one of the most affecting pieces of canine acting Iโve seen since the days of โOld Yellerโ and โLassie Come Home.โ You feel Odinโs weariness, his intelligence, his dogged loyalty. The bond he shares with James emanates from the heart of both beasts, and that makes the film a journey stirring in its primacy.
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