After a harrowing plane crash, Special Forces veteran James Belmont and his combat dog, Odin, find themselves stranded deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Together, they are forced into a brutal fight for survival against the elements.
‘Heart of the Beast’ is a survival thriller from director David Ayer, starring Brad Pitt as James Belmont, a retired Special Forces soldier who lives a quiet life with his former military dog, Odin. The pair have travelled to the Alaskan wilderness for some solitude, and apart from an encounter with a local man (J.K. Simmons), are largely alone in the vast landscape. When James suffers a heart attack while flying ahead of an approaching storm, their plane crashes in the middle of nowhere. Both survive, but with James injured and civilisation many miles away, they face a dangerous journey through the wilderness, with the elements, bears and wolves all posing a threat.
It’s an enjoyable enough survival thriller, although I was a little surprised to learn that the screenplay had spent so long on the Hollywood Black List, given how conventional the story actually is. There’s very little here that we haven’t seen in countless other films, with the main distinguishing feature being the presence of a dog. That said, I do like dogs, and Odin is a particularly good one, played by four different canines who between them give a terrific performance. Pitt is also very good, and there’s a convincing bond between the two of them, with the relationship providing much of the film’s charm and giving us a reason to care about their increasingly difficult predicament.
Like Ridley Scott’s ‘The Dog Stars’, the film also gets plenty of mileage out of sweeping aerial shots of its beautiful wilderness setting, although in this case New Zealand stands in for Alaska. The scenery is spectacular and Ayer makes good use of it, both to convey the isolation of the characters and to provide an impressive backdrop for their various encounters with nature. The survival elements are generally well handled, even if the situations James and Odin find themselves in are fairly predictable, and there are some effective moments of tension along the way.
Ultimately, ‘Heart of the Beast’ is a pretty ordinary film that doesn’t do much to distinguish itself from other survival thrillers, but it’s not without its charms. Pitt is a likeable presence, the scenery is beautiful and, most importantly, the relationship between James and Odin works really well. There’s something genuinely heartwarming about the bond between man and dog at the centre of it all, and while I wouldn’t say the film offers anything particularly new, I enjoyed spending time with the two of them.
Rating: 3/5
Directed By: David Ayer
Starring: Brad Pitt, J. K. Simmons and Anna Lambe
