In spirit it's not far removed from an old Disney movie, but Pitt gives a true performance, and so does the canine actor playing his trusty companion. In “Heart of the Beast,” Brad Pitt does something a lot of actors might not quite bring off in a man-and-his-dog-in-the-wilderness saga: He gives a true performance. His character, James Belmont, is a retired Special Forces officer who has been through a great many deployments. (There are combat flashbacks to what looks like Afghanistan, though the war isn’t named.) In the opening sequence, he’s piloting a small plane through the spectacular Alaska mountains, his trusty German Shepherd, Odin, by his side.
Odin is battle-scarred, with titanium teeth and only three legs (he wears a prosthetic one). He’s a combat dog, raised by James since he was a puppy; having been through so much war together, the two have an animal closeness you can just about touch. Pitt shows you the love and trust James and the dog share, and also the veteran James is: alert, grizzled, taciturn, resourceful, a little too content to be by himself — but he’s that way because war has formed him, and how many others would understand?
So something happened along the way. The film then flashes back a week, to when the Alaska trip starts off as a bit of low-key R&R. For a while, we revel in the roughneck pleasure of it all.
The grandeur of the skies and forests and lakes and snow-capped cliffs (the film was shot in New Zealand), the surreal quietude, the hiking through the woods, the serenity of pitching camp on a shore under the stars, the coziness of the campfire, the cooler of Belgian ale, the catching and eating of fresh salmon, the pouring of steaming coffee out of a tin pot — we could almost be watching a biopic about the Marlboro Man. All that’s missing is the lantern. Pitt, in a beard and a buzzcut and camouflage shirt and aviator shades, with a compass tattoo under his left ear, is playing a man out of Hemingway by way of L.L.
His James is so centered in this wilderness that he makes us feel at home too. It’s a telling feature of the movie that the character exhibits no overt war trauma; there’s almost a political layer to it, an undermining of the inevitability of the damaged vet. At the same time, you feel James’ war experience in the very premise of the film: his craving for isolation.
Early on, he meets a stranger who looks like an old prospector (he’s played by J.K. Simmons), but after a few friendly minutes of light banter the stranger goes on his way. The only buddy in this movie is the dog.
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