Brad Pitt has quietly been on one of the better recent late-career runs of any A-lister. F1 gave him a global blockbuster last year, but a big racing spectacle is also exactly the kind of project audiences readily buy him in. A quieter story about a damaged veteran is a much less obvious crowd-pleaser, and the premise could easily have gone missed the mark with ticket-buyers.
However, David Ayer’s Heart of the Beast has opened to some of the strongest reviews of his career, and among the better notices Pitt has received in years. Now the audience response on Rotten Tomatoes is also looking especially strong. The film currently holds a 93% Popcornmeter score from more than 1,000 verified ratings, alongside an 87% Tomatometer from 140+ reviews. It puts the movie ahead of every audience score in Ayer’s filmography, including The Beekeeper’s 92%.
The verified reviews make it pretty clear what’s driving the number. “A real tear jerker! Both Pitt and Oden should attend the Oscars,” one viewer wrote, and the Oscar lobbying is a recurring theme across the page. Another kept it simple with “Really good movie, beautiful scenery and story,” while a third praised “great great acting with gorgeous scenery.” One review gets at the theme Ayer clearly cared most about, enthusing, “It was a great movie, shows us that war dogs also have PTSD. I don’t remember the last time I felt tears roar down my face.” Another summed up the tone as:
“Super emotional with moments of levity. Great story line too.”
Heart of the Beast follows Pitt’s James Belmont, a retired Special Forces operator stranded in remote Alaska after a plane crash, with only his military dog Odin for company on the long walk back. J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe appear in support, though the film mostly belongs to Pitt and Uber, the German Shepherd playing Odin. Pitt has been upfront about the billing, admitting in a featurette that “Odin is the star of the film,” and critics largely side with him, too.
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman wrote, “This is a terrific performance — and Brad Pitt is extremely good too.” Part of what stands out here is that Ayer’s films do not usually bring critics and audiences into this kind of close agreement. Suicide Squad and Bright were broadly better received by viewers than by reviewers, while End of Watch and Fury earned more critical respect without generating quite this level of audience enthusiasm. Heart of the Beast is the first time in Ayer’s career that both metrics have landed this high together, and the reunion with Pitt twelve years after Fury is presumably a big part of why.
Release Date
September 25, 2026
Runtime
101 Minutes
Writers
Cameron Alexander