David Ayer last directed Brad Pitt in Fury (2014), a moody, muddy drama about a WWII tank commander and his wearying crew. Despite the excellent cast — imagine riding along killing Nazis with Michael Peña, Shia LaBeouf and Jon Bernthal — it was nobody's idea of a buddy adventure. Prospects are sunnier in Ayer's latest film, Heart of the Beast, which cuts back on human players and pairs a 62-year-old Pitt with a dog. Not just any dog, mind you, but a ferocious US Special Forces canine. He’s played by a swarthy German Shepherd named Uber, and there are lovely shots of Pitt massaging his fingers on the beast's hair. An alternative title for the film could be Furry.
James Belmont (Pitt) and his loyal scout, Odin, are vets with severe PTSD and survivor's guilt. The missions they ran together and lived through have bonded them for life. We hear no mention of James's family—Odin, it seems, is all he's got in this world. On a camping trip in Alaska, James steers their amphibious biplane into a gathering storm. He emerges sound and safe on the other end, only to suffer a cardiac arrest and crash into the wilderness. Initially flung apart, the duo miraculously regroup, tend to each other's wounds, and basically Bear Grylls their way back to civilisation.
I must mention an early sequence here. When JK Simmons turns up in a film unannounced, you need to pay attention. Before getting stranded and lost in the wild, James and Odin pitch camp near a placid lake. They happen upon a shaggy wanderer named Watkins (Simmons), who claims to be a former gold miner and calls James "the first human-type person" he's encountered in these woods. The purpose of this cameo, besides alerting James to the impending storm, is to establish the nuts and bolts of the film's central romance. But Simmons is always better than an exposition device. He lends a thrum of tension, a mysterious visitor who leaves behind a gift and drifts off in the morning mist.
The rest of the film is a simple and spirited survival drama. Odin has sad, searching eyes and a red scarf, but is otherwise a handy devil. James, likewise, is the kind of war veteran who tosses back aspirins to shrug off a hand fracture. Screenwriter Cameron Alexander penned this script in 2017. He spaces out the thrills—bears, wolves, rapids—with quiet, meditative stretches in the moss and the mud. James and Odin wake each night to gunfire and exploding shells—nightmares. What tides them through, ultimately, is not their individual strengths and skills but a wordless, unbroken covenant they forged in battle. Even the guilty must survive, the film entreats coyly.
Ayer aims for a soulful, sunlit humanism, but can't quite bring it to full spiritual bloom. One problem appears to be his pedigree: a maker of recent action films, such as The Beekeeper (2024), he's loath to embrace the Herzogian laws of filming in nature. Heart of the Beast was shot in the interiors of New Zealand's South Island, which stands in for Alaska. Yet, for all the dangers and the darkness that befall our leads, it's hard to shake the presence of a well-drilled camera crew and a medic team. It may not matter to most viewers, but the clean, curving camerawork, especially in the wider frames, lends a Disney-esque tameness to the action. One magical moment between Odin and a roaring Grizzly practically parodies the famous Herzog line: "To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food."
Our interest, though, is held fully by Brad Pitt. It's always a good idea to toss Pitt into the lap, or den, of nature, a tradition stretching back to the splendid fly-fishing scenes in A River Runs Through It (1992). The now-greying actor trained hard for his role in Heart of the Beast. His bushcraft is on point: ropes, knives, gauze, a copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Even humdrum shots of him gathering firewood, negotiating an incline or coming up for air from the belly of a river can elicit a smile. My strongly held theory is that, when James and Odin first met, it was the former who charmed the latter. It is one of life's reassurances: Pitt's still Pitt, and pretty.
Heart of the Beast releases in Indian theatres on September 25.