I’m happy to report that Heart of the Beast is a dog movie where the dog doesn’t die.
But that is not a spoiler, because you find it out in the very first scene — after which the movie flashes back to where it all started; so I guess like me, the filmmakers wanted to reassure us that we weren’t about to endure yet another canine crying jag.
The redoubtable Brad Pitt stars in this adventure about a retired combat veteran and his injured service dog trying to get some R&R in Alaska. But sadly, while flying home out of a storm, Pitt’s Major Belmont has a medical emergency and ditches in a lake, whereupon his seaplane promptly sinks — with the dog previously jettisoned somewhere into the wilderness.
And things, shall we say, go downhill from there.
Director David Ayer — who wrote Training Day and directed such edgy actioners as Fury and the underseen End of Watch — certainly knows how to ratchet up suspense. Indeed, first-time writer Cameron Alexander piles on one terrifying obstacle after another — starting with Belmont’s attempt to get supplies out of the sunken plane, and running right up through a grizzly, a log-bridge over a raging river and a chilly trek through a chin-high swamp.
The climactic horror — the nature of which I won’t reveal, except to say that it follows an encounter with a mama moose and baby — is well-nigh unbearable; and like some other scenes, it stretches belief to the breaking point — except that in this case, the aftermath is so brutal and bloody.
The 62-year-old Pitt — whose films have grossed nearly $8 billion worldwide — clearly did a lot of his own stunt work here, and it must have hurt more than a little. Yet this is all the more noteworthy, as Beast is not the kind of film that will win a ton of awards, or even mop up at the box office. But Pitt also served as producer, and he sure poured his heart and soul into this project — along with his body.
Actually, if the film wins any awards, it’ll be for Mauro Fiore’s breathtaking cinematography. Filmed with New Zealand standing in for Alaska, Beast often feels more like a travelogue of mountains, mists, meadows, waterways and shadowy woodlands. (It’s no surprise that Fiore already has one Oscar — for lensing the first Avatar.)
Award-wise, there also seems to be a groundswell movement to tap the dog — who is truly impressive and, if this were possible, actually underacts in most scenes. But handing a statue to this performer would be problematic; the aptly named Odin was actually played by four different dogs.
Anna Lambe brings much-needed tenderness to her brief scenes at the beginning and end, while an almost unrecognizable J.K. Simmons works his usual magic as a talkative wanderer in the wilds.
On a side-note: If, like me, you can’t get enough of Pitt, watch for the forthcoming Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth. That’s a sequel to 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which won Pitt his only acting Oscar. (He holds a second statue as producer on 12 Years a Slave — my personal favorite performance by the actor.) Written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by the veteran David Fincher, Booth is due from Netflix later this year.
Meanwhile, this galvanic wilderness adventure is slightly underperforming and really needs to be seen in theaters. But be sure to buckle up; even though the dog doesn’t die, this Beast still puts you through the wringer.
