The Heart of the Beast review: Brat Pitt stars alongside the best dog actor since Anatomy of a Fall

You know you’re watching a good dog actor when a two-hander between him and a human feels like a genuine exchange of dialogue – even though only one party ever speaks. Uber, the German Shepherd who plays Odin, a battle-scarred former military dog, is that good. He feels less like an animal performer than a co-lead. David Ayer’s survival thriller won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but one thing feels universal: Uber is the best dog actor since Anatomy of a Fall’s Messi.

The film opens with a young woman driving along a lonely Alaskan road, where she finds a tired-looking Alsatian blocking her path. Cut back a week, and we meet Brad Pitt’s James and his dog Odin living an idyllic off-grid life: landing a rickety seaplane on empty beaches, fishing, reading and sketching surprisingly good moose portraits over a few cold Belgian ales.

Their only real troubles are James’s grief for fallen friends and Odin’s PTSD nightmares – both handled with such heavy-handed exposition that they jar more than they move. Mostly, though, the pair live a happy, secluded existence. That peace ends when their plane goes down, leaving them facing a 60-mile trek through the wilderness to civilisation. What follows is arguably the worst dog walk in history: an odyssey involving bears, wolves, white-water rapids and brutal cold.

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Yet what never cracks is the bond between man and dog. Each rescues the other in turn, and the film is at its best when it lets those acts of mutual survival speak for themselves. Odin is an ex-combat dog, trained to pull soldiers out of hairy situations – and if you were in a tight spot, he’s exactly who you’d want around.

The script is sparse, though there’s more dialogue than you might expect from a film about one man and his dog. Most of it is James thinking aloud, partly for Odin’s benefit and partly for ours, and Pitt makes the most of it. He’s plainly a dog person, and it shows in how naturally he plays off Uber; there’s a tenderness between them that’s hard to fake.

It’s a physical role, too, and Pitt brings his usual rugged stoicism to a Revenant-adjacent performance where James faces dicey underwater scenes, life-threatening wounds and biting temperatures. While this won’t be his most memorable performance, it’s a sincere portrait of a veteran living with PTSD. With little dialogue and no scene partner but a dog, Pitt has nowhere to hide. James’s purpose has to carry the film alone – and somehow, it does.

Though what exactly is that purpose? We learn that James and Odin were both injured in the same attack while serving in the army, and it seems their bond is all James needs. Without mention of friends, family or a partner, it’s hard to grasp what is driving James through the despair, beyond protecting his dog. Odin rescues James as much as James protects him, raising the question Ricky Gervais posed in After Life: strip away the thing you care for, and would the will to survive still be there?

Visually, the film earns its place alongside the wilderness survival movies it resembles. Its mountainous landscapes are scored with real grandeur by Jared Michael Fry, while a quiet "respect Mother Nature" thread runs through the story, sharpened by Odin’s dealings with local wildlife. At one point, he silently talks down an angry brown bear in a way James can’t – a neat reminder of his animal instincts, and a stark contrast with the pup curled up in James’s tent or riding shotgun in the seaplane.

It's limited by its minute cast, one-way script and singular location. But Ayer's strength is that the film doesn't try to be anything it's not: a tight 101 minutes, a few laughs and one properly earned gut-punch rounded off by an epilogue that isn't as poignant as it thinks it is. Heart of the Beast stays in its lane – and is all the better for it.

The Heart of the Beast is released in UK cinemas on Wednesday 23 September.

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