Heart of the Beast

Heart of the Beast stars Brad Pitt as retired Green Beret James Belmont, stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with his former combat dog Odin (played by Uber) after a plane crash. With little hope of rescue, James and Odin must work together, as they did on the battlefield, to survive.

With its focus on a single human protagonist, one might expect Heart of the Beast to be a character study, with James’s navigation of the wilderness externalising an inner journey through his troubled past. One would be wrong – in fact, Heart of the Beast is shockingly bereft of any storytelling. There’s no emotional journey or growth; James is the same character at the end of the flick as he is at the beginning (albeit with more injuries), and his relationship with Odin, ostensibly the point of the movie, doesn’t change.

As such, nothing anchors the audience emotionally to what happens on screen, making it hard to feel anything about James’s journey. A single theme – perhaps PTSD, or man’s relationship with nature, or the dehumanising effect of military service – could have helped immensely, but the script is toothless, banking on the inherent appeal of a cute dog to do more narrative heavy lifting than could be expected of even the best boy.

It’s not all bad, though, and there’s much to like about the picture’s presentation. The Alaskan landscape is practically a third character, with gorgeous, wide camera shots conveying scale, majesty and danger. The soundtrack is also atmospheric and beautiful, featuring excellent vocal performances from the Inuit musical group Pamyua.

Uber is fantastic as Odin, hitting every mark perfectly and providing a definitive answer to the question “Who’s a good boy?”. Pitt plays second fiddle to his canine costar, but does his best with James’s limited emotional range.

On paper, Heart of the Beast is a new addition to the proud tradition of film with a dog in it. It does the latter part well enough – there is certainly a dog – but it focuses so much on the canine that it forgets to be a film. The script lays it on thick, tugging on the heartstrings, but without the basic structural skeleton, everything else falls apart. It’s a shame, as the other elements of the production are great, but these strengths are undermined by a lack of narrative conviction in any direction. There’s a beast, but no heart.

Umar Ali

Heart of the Beast is released nationwide on 23^rd September 2026.

Watch the trailer for Heart of the Beast here: