Save<\/a>Share this articleCopy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter\/XLinkedInReddit<\/p>\nBrad Pitt and David Ayer speak during an event for “Heart of the Beast”. Photo \/ Getty Images <\/p>\n
\n Now that the paperwork around the end of his marriage to Angelina Jolie has been tied up at last, Brad Pitt is starring in one of the most divorced films ever made. Director David Ayer\u2019s best feature since 2014\u2019s Fury (which also starred Pitt), this survival thriller is a grizzled
\n hymn to middle-aged, solo male resilience. It is also a celebration of the bond between a soldier and his faithful service dog, which the film paints as the deepest, most dependable and spiritually nourishing relationship that a man could possibly have.\n <\/p>\n
I mean, who needs a woman when you have a creature like Odin in your life \u2013 bright of eye, fleet of paw and sumptuous of coat? This magnificent beast, played by an Alsatian called Uber (one hopes that he wasn\u2019t named after the minicab app), accompanies his master, Pitt\u2019s special forces veteran James Belmont, on an Alaskan camping trip.<\/p>\n
Naturally, disaster strikes: Belmont\u2019s dinky seaplane comes down in a storm, stranding both hero and hound in the North American wilds, with only limited supplies. But using their extensive experience of war and drawing on a bottomless well of mutual respect and affection, the two strike out on the perilous 58-mile trek back to civilised land.<\/p>\n
The sheer simplicity of this scenario is as refreshing as dipping your feet into a stream. JK Simmons brings craggy charisma to a small supporting role as a wandering woodsman, and there is a nice, even smaller part for the Inuit actress Anna Lambe in the film\u2019s brief prologue and closing scenes. But otherwise, we get just over an hour and a half of one man and his dog \u2013 plus sundry wildlife, much of it hungry \u2013 with breathtakingly photographed wilderness landscapes (the film was shot on New Zealand\u2019s South Island) that demand to be seen on a proper cinema screen.<\/p>\n
As Once Upon a Time in Hollywood amply proved, Pitt plus dog is a winning formula that doesn\u2019t require much embellishment, and in Heart of the Beast it is again a joy to behold. You feel a soulful connection between actor and animal that goes beyond performance; whenever one instinctively helps out the other, manly tears are liable to flow. (This must be the most mercilessly effective canine weepie since Marley & Me.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robbie Collin TimeOut\u00b7 23 Sep, 2026 06:00 PM3 mins to read Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald Premium articles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[300323,2851,11771,665,300322,77669,1558,3390,5432,6867,2941,9063,430,124,6284,189495,300326,3936,103123,9219,156,6440,2753,300325,5071,593,434,2082,92147,300324,6871,305,2862,293,195601,78,33166,685,1362,6267,636,204228,3025,111,139,91697,69,1118,2847,209530,124798,56630,2204,520,12879,2552,7811,5764,59353,300327,48942,28522,6639,1361,223,1961,8731,16512,5977],"class_list":["post-609543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-2014s","tag-also","tag-angelina","tag-around","tag-ayers","tag-beast","tag-been","tag-best","tag-between","tag-bond","tag-brad","tag-celebration","tag-celebrities","tag-could","tag-david","tag-deepest","tag-dependable","tag-director","tag-divorced","tag-dog","tag-entertainment","tag-ever","tag-eyes","tag-faithful","tag-feature","tag-film","tag-films","tag-for","tag-fury","tag-grizzled","tag-has","tag-have","tag-heart","tag-his","tag-hymn","tag-in","tag-jolie","tag-last","tag-made","tag-male","tag-marriage","tag-middleaged","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nourishing","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-only","tag-paints","tag-paperwork","tag-pitt","tag-possibly","tag-relationship","tag-resilience","tag-service","tag-since","tag-soldier","tag-solo","tag-spiritually","tag-starred","tag-starring","tag-survival","tag-that","tag-the","tag-this","tag-thriller","tag-tied","tag-which"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}