Review: Heart of the Beast

Man’s best friend. How many great movies have been made about the relationship between dog and human? Or, as is often the case – the relationship between dog and guy. I watched Turner & Hooch with Tom Hanks countless times as a child. A few years ago, we got Arthur the King. Marley & Me, Max, K-9 (En snut på hugget), Dog (an obvious title but quite a nice movie). I also note that our export Lasse Hallström has directed two dog movies: Hachi – A Dog’s Tale and A Dog’s Purpose. He must really love pooches. Now it’s time for Brad Pitt to head out into the wilderness together with a retired service dog with PTSD. I saw the trailer in the cinema a few months ago and didn’t think much more about it, but then I took the chance to see the preview during Filmstadens Stora Biodagen.

The movie is called Heart of the Beast and the plot is as follows: After a violent plane crash, a retired special forces officer and his service dog are stranded deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Together, they are forced into a brutal struggle for survival against the forces of nature. Man vs. Nature (with or without human antagonists) is also a well-established genre. Deliverance (can you think of it without hearing banjo music?), The Edge, River Wild, Cast Away, Into The Wild, Alive, The Revenant. The list could go on forever. It’s a genre I appreciate, even if it might be in need of a little renewal.

Heart of the Beast is directed by David Ayer. He has a somewhat uneven CV. He broke through with Harsh Times, a gritty crime story with Christian Bale from 2005. I saw it, but I don’t remember anything from it in hindsight. Good or bad? Hard to say. End of Watch and Fury are the two that received the best reviews. The latter, a rather gritty WWII action flick, I saw in the cinema and really liked. Then he received quite a bit of flak for his take on Suicide Squad and I seem to recall that Ayer himself claimed he was kept on a tight leash by the studio and couldn’t get his own ideas through, and would like to release a newly edited version. Regardless, it was anything but good. I do recall the Netflix movie Bright with Will Smith, Joel Edgerton and Noomi Rapace being entertaining, even if it was far from perfect. It mixed cop action and gang crime with fantasy elements in a way that felt somewhat fresh but perhaps didn’t always work all the way. He has also managed to make two Jason Statham movies where Statham does what he basically always does – looks stoic and hands out beatings. Usually with relatively entertaining results, it should be added. That said, Heart of the Beast stands out a bit and that’s always fun. The screenplay is written by Cameron Alexander, and it is apparently his first feature film. Interesting.

In terms of acting, it is understandably quite sparse. Brad Pitt stars as retired soldier James Belmont. A safe choice, as Pitt is always good – it’s also the second time Pitt has taken the lead for Ayer, the last being in the previously mentioned Fury. The dog Odin is played by Uber, a German Shepherd. And here we have, of course, the film’s real main character – and as you can imagine – the film’s heart. Pitt was asked how high he ranked Uber’s performance compared to others he has acted opposite, and the answer was third place, right after Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins. A pretty good rating, one must say. The superb J.K. Simmons appears in a small role as the mysterious but kind-hearted Watkins who sets up camp next to Belmont and the dog before the accident. Belmont is naturally guarded, and who wouldn’t be if approached by a bearded man in the woods countless miles from civilization. Watkins becomes a metaphor for – what? If you know your Greek mythology, you’ll get it.

Heart of the Beast is a well-made film. The plane crash is well-executed and the environments are breathtaking. The CGI animals the antagonists face look okay, even if they are clearly animated. The music by Jared Michael Fry, an unknown name to me but he apparently did the music for the Ayer-directed Statham movies Beekeeper and A Working Man, does its part. But when the tear ducts start to swell toward the end, it’s another composer’s work I hear. I haven’t found any info about it online, but it sounds very much like a work by my personal favorite Max Richter. Or possibly Clint Mansell. Again, I have no proof on the table, but my ears and musical memory usually don’t lie. It’s also not uncommon. Max Richter’s fantastic and incredibly sad On the nature of daylight from the album The Blue Notebooks has, after all, been used in several productions, including Arrival, Shutter Island and an especially sad and beautiful episode in the first season of The Last of Us.

So how does the movie hold up? Heart of the Beast is poignant and exciting. The chemistry between Pitt and Uber is wonderful, and the dog is, as previously mentioned, the real main character in my eyes and many others. The tempo is high almost the entire time from the moment disaster strikes. However, the film doesn’t offer anything we haven’t seen before. It’s a tried-and-tested concept and there are no surprises here. But that’s fine; we get a solid film that evokes emotions, entertains, and is beautiful to look at. Sometimes that’s all you need. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. One thing that would have been appreciated, however, would have been “real” flashbacks from their time as a combat team. What we are given are just very short glimpses in the form of gunfire and blurry images. That’s a bit of a shame. I actually expected to see more of the backstory. It would definitely have added an extra dimension and increased the tension. But enough complaining. Heart of the Beast is, as a whole, a solid and fine film. Definitely not something that needs to be seen in the cinema. Right after Fury, this is the best Ayer film, tied with the entertaining Bright. At least among those I actually have fresh in my memory.