PG-13 | 1h 41m | Survival, Thriller, Drama | 2026
The showbiz quote “Never work with children or animals” is sound advice. A being in its true state is inherently fascinating and watchable. It can take 20 years for an actor to learn to “play himself.” If an actor hasn’t mastered being unshakably present, he or she will immediately get upstaged by children and animals, because the actor is fake, and kids and dogs are not.
Mega-star Brad Pitt manages to holds his own with canine co-star Odin, a working search-and-rescue German shepherd and the titular beast in the very fine “Heart of the Beast.”
Almost ‘The Dog Stars’ Part Two
We just had “The Dog Stars” two weeks ago, which also features a rifle-slung ex-military individual flying a remote bush plane through expansive Alaskan backcountry vistas, with a pet German shepherd (Belgian Malinois, actually, but Malinois are as close to shepherds as Germany is to Belgium). However, while Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars” is uncharacteristically boring, “Heart of the Beast” is a rip-roaring survival tail, er, tale.
What Goes On
After a fly-fishing trip to the Alaskan bush (where Pitt trots out the fly-casting expertise he learned on “A River Runs Through It”), ex-Green Beret James Belmont (Pitt) crashes his single-engine plane due to a mild but serious-enough heart attack.
Now, he’s got to navigate 50-plus miles across remote, untamed, deep-forest terrain that’s bristling with apex predators. His traveling buddy is Odin, a battle-scarred, prosthetic-foreleg-wearing warrior dog who saw combat with Belmont in Afghanistan.
I griped about the extensive dog-owner culture (endless face-licking, treats, and “g’boys”) that took up a full fourth of “The Dog Stars.” Here—it’s the entire movie. But it works, because while “Dog Stars” Jasper the Malinois was cute as heck, in “Beast,” Odin, the actual warrior dog, is uncommonly soulful. And young Jacob Elordi is no match for seasoned Pitt. Although I will say that had one more minute-long face-licking bout occurred, I would have maybe stood up and groaned “Uggghhh stop that” and sat back down again.
Who’s the Beast?
The movie starts with a young Inuk woman (Anna Lambe) driving her light blue vintage Ford pickup truck down a dirt road in the Alaskan outback. Suddenly, there’s a random canine beast wearing a combat vest standing in the middle of the road, clearly wishing to flag her attention.
The film then rewinds one week to tell the story of how this dog got to where he is now. Since “Heart of the Beast” is first and foremost a dog-lover film, as well as a heartfelt tribute to America’s war-fighter dogs, we’re immediately given a reassurance that the dog is going to be okay.
The same can’t be said for the man. Pitt’s retired, Army Special Forces vet is essentially fine—at first. Despite the standard retired ex-spec ops burden of PTSD-generated bad dreams, he’s doing okay. To understand the Green Beret mindset, I recommend “In Search of the Warrior Spirit” by Aikido master Richard Strozzi-Heckler. These resourceful lone wolves love nothing better than to be out in the wilderness and being fully self-reliant.
However, the domino effect of a string of bad-luck mishaps begin to stack up and stack the deck against him. We witness the never-quit mindset of the American special operator, as nonstop scrapes, falls, broken bones, and other injuries begin to snowball.
All of these incidents are outstandingly staged and gripping. There are three kinds of human stories: man against man, man against himself, and man against nature. “Heart of the Beast” features the last two, writ large, and “beast” refers to both the human and the animal, because in current, complimentary parlance, James Belmont is an absolute endurance beast with tremendous heart.
Cinematography
Similar to the outstanding nature-capture in the currently playing “The Weight,” whose Oregonian forests were shot in Germany, here, New Zealand stands in for Alaska. The illusion is successful.
My only gripe is the CGI. Everyone’s been fooled multiple times on social media by scary-good AI by now, so it’s curious that CGI depictions of bears and wolves in top-flight Hollywood films are still so easily recognizable that they’re noticeably distracting to the suspension of disbelief.
Odin the Alsatian, whose real name is Uber, is wonderfully real, and Uber’s three sons—Seeka, Ryker, and Hondo—act as doubles, portraying younger versions of their dad in flashbacks. Pitt as mentioned, demonstrates he can work with animals, and there’s a fun, early appearance by J.K. Simmons as a garrulous mountain man with a bison skull on his small boat, who, after sharing a campfire, gifts a book in exchange for another beer from Belmont’s cooler.
America’s K-9 Warriors
The heart of “Heart of the Beast” is a tribute to America’s MWDs (Military Working Dogs), so it’s fitting to end with some stats about what our “fur-missile” friends bring to the table: First, they’re massive force multipliers. K-9 units saved over 10,000 human lives during the Vietnam War alone. A single K-9 will save 150 to 200 human lives over the course of their active career.
MWDs possess a 98 percent accuracy rate in sniffing out explosives, narcotics, and hidden weapons caches. Their super-noses can detect mines buried six-feet deep, including ones with wood or cardboard casings that metal-mine detectors miss. My favorite anecdote about war dogs’ super-nosicles is when a K-9 led his human patrol to three bullets, wrapped in a plastic bag, tucked under a bicycle seat, that he smelled from a mile away … wait for it … in a sandstorm. G’BOY!!
A K-9 can clear, in two minutes, a large structure that typically takes a human element more than 20 minutes to clear, and warrior dogs had a zero-ambush record during World War II—no enemy force was ever able to ambush U.S. Marine patrols that were led by an active scout dog.
And there’s more! But that’s enough. Give a thought to these happy tail-wagging warriors next Memorial Day.
“Heart of the Beast” opens on Sept. 25.
‘Heart of the Beast’
Director: David Ayer
Starring: Brad Pitt, Uber, J.K. Simmons, Anna Lambe
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 41 minutes
Release Date: Sept. 25, 2026
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Would you like to see other kinds of arts and culture articles? Please email us your story ideas or feedback at features@epochtimes.nyc
