Heart of the Beast: Movie Review

If you're a dog lover, you need to brace yourself for this movie. There are very few things that can make me break down and sob uncontrollably quite as easily as watching the deep, emotional bond between a man and his dog unfold on screen. Over the years, we've built up quite the catalogue of dog movies infamous for traumatising audiences, from Marley & Me and Old Yeller to the absolutely soul-crushing and heart-shattering Hachi: A Dog's Tale (a movie I still refuse to rewatch to this day after spending hours crying over it). We now have a new addition to this list: Heart of the Beast, the new Brad Pitt movie.

Heart of the Beast is a survival thriller with a fairly straightforward premise. Brad Pitt plays James Belmont, a former Special Forces Command Sergeant Major who now spends his retirement travelling around in a six-seat aircraft alongside his combat dog, Odin. Having served together and endured the atrocities of war, both James and Odin struggle with PTSD and vivid, haunting nightmares. At the beginning of the movie, we meet James and Odin as they land their aircraft and set up camp for the night beside a remote lake in Alaska. While exploring the nearby forest, they come across a strange but friendly stranger named Watkins. The three spend the evening together around a campfire, drinking beer and getting to know one another. As Watkins asks about Odin, we learn that he has been fitted with artificial teeth and a prosthetic leg, both of which he needed as a result of the injuries he sustained during the war.

James and Odin eventually depart in their aircraft, but disaster strikes when James suffers a heart attack mid-flight, causing them to crash into a body of water. During the crash, the rear of the plane is blown apart, throwing Odin out of the aircraft. James later finds him in the forest, weak and unconscious but still breathing. With Odin alive, James returns to the wreckage to salvage whatever supplies and equipment he can find that might help them survive. After assessing their situation and calculating their location, James realises that they are stranded approximately 90 kilometres away from civilisation. Once Odin has recovered enough to continue, the two set off together on the long trek towards safety.

As they make their way through the wilderness, James and Odin face several encounters that put their survival to the test. From coming face to face with a grizzly bear to a nasty fall into the rapids that leaves James with a broken arm, the journey quickly becomes a fight to stay alive. Later, the two are ambushed by a pack of grey wolves in the middle of the night. Armed with a spear and a knife, James manages to fight off the wolves, but not without suffering a nasty bite to the stomach. With his injuries getting worse and his strength fading, the journey becomes increasingly difficult, and after struggling through a swamp, James eventually reaches a hill before collapsing from exhaustion.

Realising that he isn't going to survive, he writes a letter explaining what happened and leaving his money to whoever takes Odin in, before sending his beloved dog towards a nearby road in the hope that someone will find him. James eventually succumbs to his injuries, leaving Odin to make his way to the road alone, where a young woman finds him and takes him in.

Heart of the Beast is predictable, quite by the book, and doesn't offer many surprises. The story pretty much unfolds exactly as you'd expect it to. But despite that, it still manages to have an incredible emotional impact, and I was crying my eyes out in the cinema during the goodbye between James and Odin. At the end of the day, there's just something about the bond between a man and his dog that never fails to break your heart, no matter how many times you've seen it play out on screen.