Heart Of The Beast

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Victoria's Statewide Mornings program on October 1, 2026.

(M) ★★★

Director: David Ayer.

Cast: Brad Pitt, JK Simmons, Anna Lambe.

"You got you're own driver? And a masseuse?"

In years to come, if people remember this film at all, they'll remember it as the Brad Pitt Dog Movie. This is largely because the real title of the film isn't great.  

But will they remember the film at all? Heart Of The Beast (to give it its actual title) is a decent movie without being exceptional. It's a survival adventure, but little more, and its obstacle/action sequences are great, but the whole thing never leaves you with a wow factor. Rather, it leaves you with the feeling you know exactly where this is going, partly because the movie opens with a scene from the end of the film, which is infuriating and pointless. 

Pitt stars as James, a retired Green Beret, who goes on a camping trip in the Alaskan wilderness with his also-retired combat dog Odin. When things turn bad, man and dog must work together to overcome incredible odds to make it back to civilisation.

Aside from some flashbacks and an early encounter between Pitt's James and Simmons' grizzled gold miner Watkins, the majority of the film is Pitt and dog trekking through the wilderness, hitting one life-threatening obstacle after another. It's intense, edge-of-your-seat stuff, and done well. The stunts are excellent, the CG tasteful, and the sense of danger and tension is excellent.

Pitt is also excellent, utterly believable as a soldier/survivalist. With just a dog (who admittedly is pretty good) to bounce off, Pitt shows he still has the magnetism to carry a film.

Heart Of The Beast is a decent film but never anything more. An end text suggests the film is an ode to combat dogs, which is nice, but it's part of the film's attempts to push aggressively at your emotional buttons. Throw in an at-times OTT soundtrack (and a horrendous end credits cover of Stand By Me), and you can't help but feel manipulated, as opposed to just feeling the feelings. The ending is bold but still felt pushy, not emotional. Usually I'm the first person to cry at a movie. Maybe I'm not enough of a dog person, but Heart Of The Beast felt like it was trying too hard to make me cry. But maybe that's just me - there were certainly other people in tears at the screening I attended.

I may be completely wrong about this (and I often am about these things), but this strikes me as the kind of film I will have completely forgotten about in five years time. It's solid, and does a decent job at what it sets out to do, but I can't shake the feeling that it wanted more from me as a viewer and I didn't feel the film earned it.