Anyone who’s a movie buff and/or is used to Brad Pitt‘s movies knows he’s already been through pretty much every kind of situation a protagonist can face: he’s played a soldier, spy, assassin, stuntman, race car driver, and even an astronaut, usually surrounded by other characters, explosions, or some kind of problem big enough to explain all the chaos. His next challenge, however, doesn’t put him in the role of the protagonist who can fix everything; this time, the idea is to put him somewhere his character may have experience, strength, and training, but without any real control over what happens. It’s a straight-up survival story.
But then you might ask what exactly makes the film worth looking forward to. Sure, there are already some great action thrillers like The Grey, The Revenant, and The Edge, but the real appeal here is seeing Pitt reunite with a director who knows how to work with him in the role of a man trained to deal with the worst possible scenario — and with one partner he simply can’t afford to leave behind. Honestly, it could end up being one of the most interesting projects of Pitt’s career.
With its release just a few weeks away, Heart of the Beast follows James Belmont (Pitt), a former Special Forces officer who gets caught in a plane crash and ends up stranded in the Alaskan wilderness alongside Odin, his former combat dog. With no team coming to look for them and no easy way out, the two have to make their way across the wilderness and find a path back home. The real problem is making it to the other side alive, because James may know his way around combat, but that doesn’t mean he’s prepared to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with freezing temperatures, rough conditions, and limited resources, right? The main cast also includes J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe, with a script by Cameron Alexander, and David Ayer directing.
Okay, so what should we actually expect from the new movie, especially when anyone familiar with Pitt’s work already knows how much he likes taking on roles that are different, but still pretty adventurous? The actor has played pretty much every kind of action main character, so it would be very easy to turn James Belmont into just another tough guy. The difference, though, is this feature doesn’t seem to rely entirely on the actor to carry the action, since Odin is such an important part of the story, and their relationship is what should keep the story from turning into nothing more than a repetitive series of scenes where Pitt walks through the wild, runs into a problem, and has to find a way out. And actually, the dog might be the most interesting part of the whole project.
Well, not everyone is exactly excited to watch a survival thriller with a dog, since putting an animal in a story like this is basically asking the audience to stress out every time it gets into trouble. But in Heart of the Beast, Odin isn’t there just for that reason, as the idea is for everything to really be built around his partnership with the protagonist, with Ayer himself talking about their relationship as one of the main reasons the whole movie works. “(…) it’s two beings that have gone through hell and back together and share this deep bond and intimacy,” he said in an interview with GQ. “Working with animals is its own experience, and sometimes you can see the lack of connection when people do these movies, but we really made the dog a living, breathing, fully-formed character, with a soulful presence. And you can feel their history, their connection.”
The expectations also get a little higher when you look at the director’s track record, since he’s always liked exploring characters who are used to violence and pressure, especially men connected to the military, law enforcement, or some kind of highly disciplined environment. Obviously, not all of his movies have worked, but there’s a pretty clear identity there. Heart of the Beast seems to fit right into that, just in a less conventional way. That’s why it’s worth looking back at this partnership with Pitt in Fury, which is still one of the best films either of them has made and gives us an even better idea of what to expect now.
Fury came out in 2014, putting Pitt in the role of Don “Wardaddy” Collier, the commander of a Sherman tank during the final months of World War II, with Ayer directing and writing the story. It’s a heavy, violent movie that puts a lot of focus on the relationship between the soldiers inside that tank. More than the war itself, the whole point was that these men depended on each other to stay alive. And because of that, it’s hard not to see a connection with Heart of the Beast. Sure, both movies couldn’t be more different in scale, but the central idea is pretty similar: in one, Pitt’s character is trapped inside a tank with a small crew, and everything comes down to trust; in the other, he’s isolated with a dog, and the bond is pretty much all he has left.
And when you really stop and look at it, the new project almost feels like an evolution of that dynamic. The filmmaker could have put the actor back into the role of a military figure dealing with a combat situation. It would have been the easy choice and probably would have sold the movie without much trouble, considering the genre and Pitt’s reputation, but instead, they took something that already worked in Fury (an extremely capable protagonist who has to depend on someone else) and completely changed the situation. Ayer talked a little about this:
“I think we’ve both matured a lot in life. And Fury was interesting because it’s a war movie, there’s tanks, stuff blowing up, people everywhere, and there’s a scale to it. In this film, there’s nowhere to hide. It’s me, Brad, a camera, and a dog. He’s coming off the success of F1, and it’s such a big international world, with the cars and the noise and the crowds, and then he got compressed down into this aesthetic of simple beauty and playing such intricate… I don’t want to say suffering, because there’s so much joy and hope in it. But it was definitely an evolution. And it’s probably the most difficult film I’ve made, for those exact reasons. There was not any room for a misstep.”
Heart of the Beast has a premise that could turn into a pretty generic movie, honestly: a soldier, a dog, a plane crash, and a remote setting — none of that is exactly new. But what makes the project worth paying attention to is the way Ayer seems to be building on the relationship he already has with Pitt. Still, how will James and Odin’s dynamic work across an entire movie? Because there’s a big difference between seeing them share a few nice moments together and actually making you feel like these two genuinely need each other. Well, if we take the director’s words into account, maybe the new feature really does have a chance to surprise us. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Heart of the Beast hit theaters on September 25.
