Heart of the Beast

Heart of the Beast: full review

Let's start with what matters: the dog is called Odin. In this house we cannot be objective about an animal that shares its name with our Grand Academic of Cynicism, so we'll say it now and get it off our chests: the dog is the best thing in the film. The good news is that the rest isn't bad at all either. Heart of the Beast is an old-school survival film, dry, physical and almost wordless, in which Brad Pitt and a military dog have to cross on foot a piece of Alaska that seems designed by someone who hates humanity.

The premise fits on a postage stamp. James Belmont (Pitt), a retired Special Forces command sergeant major, and Odin, his combat dog, both carry a post-traumatic stress the film shows more than it explains. They're flying a light aircraft across the Alaskan interior when Belmont suffers a heart attack mid-flight and the plane ends up in the water. From there, nearly a hundred kilometres of forest, rivers, a grizzly bear and a wolf pack stand between them and civilisation. Cameron Alexander's script was on the 2017 Black List, Hollywood's famous list of the best unproduced screenplays, and you can see why: it's a clean story, unadorned, with a heart that doesn't need big speeches.

David Ayer takes off the uniform (halfway)

David Ayer has spent much of his career among cops, soldiers and tough guys: Training Day as a writer, End of Watch, Fury (also with Pitt) and the disaster of Suicide Squad. Here he strips his cinema down to the essentials and it suits him beautifully. With no shootouts or urban chases, Ayer films survival as work: lighting a fire, resetting a broken arm, deciding where to cross a freezing river. The bear and wolf sequences are the most intense in the film, and he handles them with a mix of tension and rawness reminiscent of Joe Carnahan's The Grey, without the philosophical grandstanding.

Mauro Fiore's cinematography makes the most of spectacular landscapes that, by the way, aren't in Alaska: the shoot took place around Queenstown, New Zealand. You'd never guess. The cold is felt, the water is felt and, above all, the distance is felt. It's a film in which walking is the main action, and Ayer makes every kilometre weigh.

Pitt, with nothing left to prove

Brad Pitt has spent years choosing roles in which he can be himself with a touch of weariness, and Belmont is the perfect example. He's a man of few words who talks more to his dog than to any human being, and Pitt plays him with admirable restraint, letting his body tell the story of the wear and tear. There's something of his character in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in him, the same complicity with a dog, but far darker. He also produces, through his company Plan B, and you can tell how carefully the material has been protected.

The human cast is minimal. J.K. Simmons appears at the start as Watkins, a chatty stranger with whom Belmont swaps a book for a Belgian ale, and Anna Lambe has a brief but important role in the final stretch. The rest is Pitt and the dog, played by four different animals who take turns without the seams showing. The chemistry between them is real, and the film nurtures it with shots that let the animal breathe instead of turning it into a pet-food commercial.

What it lacks

The risk of such an austere survival film is repetition, and Heart of the Beast doesn't entirely avoid it. Around the hour mark the structure becomes predictable: obstacle, injury, small victory, another obstacle. The post-traumatic stress Belmont and Odin share is hinted at more than developed, and the film doesn't always know what to do with it. And anyone who knows the genre will soon sense where the ending is going, which we leave for the ending explained section below. Suffice it to say it's no pet-food-ad ending, and it has more courage than you'd expect from a Paramount film with a star.

Audiences have responded the way they haven't to a survival drama in a long time: twenty million dollars on its opening weekend in the US, more than 180 million worldwide on a budget of 82, an A− CinemaScore and 84% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. In Spain it screened out of competition at the San Sebastián Film Festival before its theatrical release. It's a deserved success for a film that needs no multiverses or sequels to work.

The best

• Odin: the best dog of the season, and not just because of the name.
• Brad Pitt: restraint, weariness and a chemistry with the animal that carries the film.
• The austerity: a survival film without tricks, with genuinely tense bear and wolf scenes.

The worst

• The repetitive structure: the second act lines up obstacles with too much regularity.
• The half-told trauma: the PTSD of man and dog remains a sketch.
• The predictability: anyone who has seen enough survival cinema will know where it's heading.

The Claqueta Ácida Verdict

Heart of the Beast is a small film with a huge star, and its great virtue is that it never tries to look like more than it is. David Ayer finally forgets the noise and delivers his most sober work, Brad Pitt proves he doesn't need to talk to fill the screen and Odin, the dog, deserves all the awards he won't get. We give it a 7.2: a tough, moving and honest survival film that would do well to run ten minutes shorter. Bring tissues. And if you have a dog, hug it when you get home. 🐺

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