Brad Pitt has the clout to make pretty much whatever movie he wants to, and he chooses well, including a lot of great work with top directors. He also has a strong track record as a producer, and his name and that of his production company, Plan B, are on several great indie releases every year. So why did he agree to star in a dog picture, directed by David Ayer?
A reunion with his Fury director, Pitt stars in Heart of the Beast, a movie that makes it clear that Pitt’s character is a war hero, and his dog’s also a war hero. Not based on a true story or any particular novel, it’s an earnest story about appreciating our veterans, human and canine alike. I understand that Pitt has movie-star appeal, even at 62, and a lot of people love dog stories. But Heart of the Beast doesn’t bring much to the table. When it comes to movies about a solitary man who goes to Alaska, this is no Grizzly Man, nor is it an Into the Wild. And thanks to the recent The Dog Stars, it’s not even the best movie of the last month in which the hero has a very large dog and very small plane.
Pitt plays James Belmont, a Special Forces veteran who takes a small-plane tour of the remote reaches of Alaska with his best friend, Odin the Dog. We don’t get much detail about the duo’s war service, except that it was harrowing, and left both of them with PTSD and an accompanying reluctance to deal with other people. Dog, the movie with Channing Tatum a few years ago, had a similar idea, although the Pitt version, unlike Tatum’s, never implies that the dog participated in torture or other war crimes. JK Simmons shows up early as an old codger, unrecognizable by sight, though I could spot him by his voice. But the movie gets less interesting once he exits.
Pitt and his dog get into a series of adventures and calamities that threaten to injure them or separate them. And Pitt, like Chris Farley in the old Da Bears sketches, has small heart attacks, but always recovers quickly, in time for another adventure. There are some pretty vistas, with New Zealand standing in for Alaska. Although one action scene, involving an animal attack, is shot so incoherently that I’d no idea which animal was which.
Pitt is set to star in The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, his Fight Club director David Fincher’s sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where he’ll reprise his Oscar-winning part. Opinions differ on that movie’s looks, but undoubtedly Pitt’s turn will be better remembered than his Alaska dog movie.