Brad Pitt, Uber the Dog Star in Ayer's Wilderness Drama — SkimNews
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- Brad Pitt stars as James Belmont, a retired Special Forces officer whose combat flashbacks (unnamed but resembling Afghanistan) inform his craving for isolation, in David Ayer's 'Heart of the Beast,' shot in New Zealand standing in for Alaska
- Odin, a three-legged, titanium-toothed German Shepherd combat dog played by canine actor Uber, shares a bond with James that the reviewer compares to canine performances from 'Old Yeller' and 'Lassie Come Home'
- David Ayer, director of urban-crime films 'End of Watch' and 'The Beekeeper,' pivots to what the reviewer calls 'something not so far removed from an old-school Disney movie,' with Pitt and Ayer both serving as producers
- The survival ordeal strands James and Odin without their plane 58 miles from the nearest road, where they contend with a digital-effects grizzly bear, howling wolves, a treacherous white-water river crossing, and accumulating injuries
- The film notably rejects the 'damaged veteran' trope: the reviewer reads Pitt's centered, self-possessed performance — alert, grizzled, taciturn but not traumatized — as 'an undermining of the inevitability of the damaged vet'
- J.K. Simmons appears briefly as a stranger resembling an old prospector, and Anna Lambe plays a young woman whose opening pickup-truck scene bookends the flashback structure
Why it matters: For David Ayer — a director whose brand was urban-crime nihilism via 'End of Watch' and 'The Beekeeper' — teaming with Pitt on a near-Disney-style wilderness drama is a major tonal reinvention. Equally notable, the film rejects the 'damaged veteran' archetype: Pitt's Special Forces retiree displays no overt war trauma, a deliberate departure from the genre's usual template.
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