Dads won't stand in the living room to watch so-so survival story Heart Of The Beast

Brad Pitt and a scene-stealing dog survive a hyper-masculine march through the Alaskan wilderness in the gentle, silly drama.

By Jacob Oller | September 25, 2026 | 6:00am

Photo: Paramount Pictures

Film Reviews Brad Pitt

Dads won't stand in the living room to watch so-so survival story Heart Of The Beast

So many earnest dad weepies are simply gray-haired, wrinkled versions of boyhood fantasies. Heart Of The Beast, which strands Brad Pitt as a sixtysomething Special Forces retiree on an isolated Alaskan journey of survival, is effectively a Boy Scout yarn, a story about a guy, his dog, and a solid stick. Well, that and a fully-stocked REI stuffed into his backpack, because Heart Of The Beast is less a survival thriller—where one adapts to the harsh practical problems of nature—and more a survivalist-flavored drama—where those physical hurdles are overshadowed by manly emotions (aimed at a manly hound) and the reluctantly unclinched jaw that voices them. This means that director David Ayer’s march through the wilderness is his most tender film, as tender as a movie with a Grey-like wolf fight can be, yet one that never quite stays on its well-trod genre trail.

Heart Of The Beast dresses up like a Bass Pro Shops-branded take on Jack London and Cormac McCarthy (The Road makes a brief appearance), unevenly asserting that everyman quality that so many of these masculine daydreams entail. “If that was me,” they coax desk jockeys to think, “I could get through it.” But James (Pitt) isn’t an everyman. His dog Odin (played by a winning German Shepherd named Uber) isn’t even an everydog. They’re both highly trained combat vets, both sufferers of PTSD, and both covered in the physical scars that represent their inner grit. The amount they muscle through—after James crashes his small plane in the middle of nowhere while suffering from a heart attack—verges on ludicrous, then hops over the ledge yelling “Geronimo!”

But even focusing on the pained perseverance of this grizzled, tough-as-nails duo doesn’t mean that the film doesn’t take similar pains to hold its audience’s hand: To reassure those potentially worried about its most empathetic character, an opening flash-forward makes it clear that Odin makes it through the story’s week-long ordeal, though it’s strategically vague about James’ fate. So, despite seeing a charming dog getting thrown from planes, charged at by bears, and otherwise roughed up by the elements, there’s little to fear. Similarly, for all the wounds and ailments sustained by James—which range from his recurring heart pain, which amusingly pops back up whenever it’d be narratively inconvenient like in the Monty Python sketch “The Dirty Fork,” to a broken arm—he takes them all in stride. It helps that he can start a fire with one hand tied behind his back and has an endless supply of waterproof bags. If fire was a miracle in Cast Away, it’s an afterthought in Heart Of The Beast. For these two, marching more than 50 miles through the frigid woods is just a matter of white-knuckle determination and a few “get out of jail free” cards doled out by screenwriter Cameron Alexander.

But even those prone to nitpick the tactics, outfitting, and luck of the protagonists may find themselves taken with Mauro Fiore’s sweeping aerial landscapes (New Zealand standing in well enough) and many cute-if-simple shots of Odin’s inscrutable expressions. There’s far less complicated or telegraphed dog acting than in something like Good Boy, but Odin is at least a refreshingly flesh-and-blood animal star when so many film creatures—like every other ugly critter in this movie—are now poorly put together with CGI.

Odin needs to shoulder much of the film, as it’s just him and James for the vast majority of Heart Of The Beast, walking in tandem or cozying up in their shared tent. The only other person they encounter is a Charon-like boatsman (J. K. Simmons) who canoes in and out of James’ life like a harbinger of death (if harbingers of death liked to pound a few brews with the subjects of their omens). Otherwise, the most talking we hear comes from the military chatter of bad dreams, from the shared flashback nightmares—shakily filmed and cut together in the orange hue of a Middle East farce—that neither effectively lay bare the horrors of war, nor express their trauma so well that it can stand in for characterization.

But that doesn’t stop Heart Of The Beast from over-relying on them, leaving Pitt to trudge along in a more physical and stoic mode than the one he’s best in. It’s not that a moment as generic as tightroping across a fallen tree, which now spans a ravine over a river, doesn’t deserve a movie star, but that Pitt’s movie-star abilities are wasted in such a meat-and-potatoes, cable programmer scenario. Even when James does get a moment to wax poetic, Ayer plays it so ham-fistedly, so cloyingly, and with so little restraint, that no matter the caliber of the performance, it could only ever come off as cheesy, or worse, desperate.

That’s anathema to the film’s gruff masculine spirit, even if it does strive to squeeze a few tears from its stony demographic. But Heart Of The Beast wants both to soak in its testosterone-drenched fable, where a man and a mutt (and a military supply of equipment) can overcome everything, and find the softer underbelly of that same tale, where man’s best friend can also function as a surrogate recipient for his stifled emotions. It’s sometimes admirably gentle in that latter regard, but so much of the film is spent putting on a blandly tough face that this small glimpse at vulnerability comes, in what might also be relatable for the men it’s aimed at, too late to matter.

Director: David Ayer
Writer: Cameron Alexander
Starring: Brad Pitt, J.K. Simmons
Release Date: September 25, 2026

Join the discussion...

Keep scrolling for more great stories.