Such a Good Boy
Brad Pitt stars in one of his most moving and believable romances ever. That sounds weird.
Heart of the Beast
Director: David Ayer • Writer: Cameron Alexander
Starring: Uber, Brad Pitt
USA • 1hr 42mins
Opens Hong Kong September • IIA
Grade: B
Yeah, sorry, Brad Pitt, but your ass is going to have to take a back seat in this one. Because really, does anyone know of anybody even remotely interested in Heart of the Beast because of Pitt and not the dog? I don’t.
Director David Ayer does urban grit and grime as well as anyone, and if you need proof you can start with his holy LAPD trinity of starry cop thrillers: Harsh Times, Street Kings and End of Watch. Each is a self-contained nasty bit of departmental corruption and nihilism with some excellent tense action tossed into the mix – which Ayer may have actually perfected in last year’s Jason Statham fisticuff fest The Beekeeper. He’s missed the mark occasionally (Bright, Suicide Squad, which he blamed on Warner Bros., and I believe him) but when Ayer’s brand of muscular, masculine, bleak crime thrillers hit, they really fuckin’ hit. You can also thank him (or blame him) for kicking off The Fast and the Furious franchise; he wrote the first one. So combine all that with the universal truth that the messed up animals are the best animals (any three-legged dog or one-eyed cat owner will concur) and you’ve got a recipe for the strangest, yet somehow still ultra-macho, bromantic tragedy of the year and one of the most endearing Good Boys ever put to film. Somehow this all works.
Swear to god if that dog dies…
Pitt is retired US special forces something or other James Belmont, a guy suffering PTSD from a gruesome deployment somewhere with an orange filter (so Middle East, North Africa or Pakistan) from which he is the only survivor. Well, him and his visibly scarred K9 combat dog Odin, played spectacularly by Uber (and Seeka, Ryker and Hondo as puppy Odin), a German shepherd also suffering PTSD, but also sporting dentures (some motherfucker hit him with a brick) and a prosthetic leg. Okay, this movie can fuck off right there because if this dog dies I’m going to throw hands. That said, Ayer has assured is all, on the record, The Dog Does Not Die – and we also know this because it starts with Odin on a highway looking for a ride. He gets one from a woman in a pick-up truck (Anna Lambe) before flashing back in fine survival thriller fashion to the ominous one week earlier.
Seven days ago James and Odin flew out to the middle of nowhere Alaska in James’s Cessna for some alone time and man and dog bonding. It should be stated that this bonding provides the emotional backbone of the story, and without it there are no heroics (or tears), and it’s precisely what’s missing from The Dog Stars. We didn’t understand Jacob Elordi’s misery when his dog died and, sorry to say, Jacob Elordi is no Brad Pitt, so he was unable to show us his misery just by, you know, acting. Anyway, James and Odin are hanging out in the wilderness, they spend a night with an old codger (JK Simmons for reasons) who warns them about bad weather coming, then promptly crash the Cessna the next day when trying to go home. Now James and Odin must brave the elements, bears, wolves, raging rivers and topographical maps to get back to civilisation, and determine who the beast is, and whose heart is stronger.
Heart of the Beast is fairly standard survival thriller stuff, and Ayer and first time screenwriter Cameron Alexander don’t mess with the formula; they don’t have to. When Odin has a nightmare we get the message loud and clear that war is hell for all creatures great and small (hey, maybe this is the movie that will finally make the concept really stick). There are plenty of clichés to nitpick at: James is a man of action and warfare but he’s got the soul of a poet, like most army grunts do. Nature is the world’s most underrated healer. Old guys in the woods are probably miners. It’s all very peaceful and life-affirming until Ayer and DOP Mauro Fiore (Avatar, Spider-Man: No Way Home) ratchet up the tension with some low-key sweat-inducing set pieces, including a fight with a wolf pack and the nerve-wracking plane crash that sets them off through the wilderness. On their incredible journey (see what I did there?) both get to indulge in some serious machismo, and both are way less eye-rolling than Mark Wahlberg could ever be.
The secret weapon, of course, is Uber, really a beautiful dog, and his bond (performance?) with Pitt is entirely believable, lucky considering the entire story hinges on that bond; Heart of the Beast is less Dog Stars and more Black Dog. And running him and Pitt across gorgeous New Zealand (starring as Alaska) landscape doesn’t hurt. His little pooch flak jacket and high tech prosthetic leg with species-appropriate paw make both of them all the more sympathetic, as does James’ careful treatment of Odin’s amputated leg, framed with the same sensitivity as if he were massaging a person’s leg. The difference is that Odin is probably less judgemental, demanding or conditional in his affection than another human would be. Man, people are the worst.