After a brief summer hiatus, I am back to watching mystery movie Mondays at the local theater. For a paltry five dollars, I was treated to what will no doubt be one of the best movies of the year, The Heart of the Beast. Now, it isn’t always a guarantee that the mystery movie will be a great movie. Sometimes you get treated to wonderful movies like Eleanor the Great, Eternity or Tuner, and sometimes you get duds like One Night Only or Motor City.
The Heart of the Beast is one of thise movies you will no doubt want to see this year, and with a setting like Alaska, it deserves to be seen in the theater. There are only three humans that we see more than flashes of – Brad Pitt as James, Anna Lambe as the young woman who encounters Odin at the beginning of the movie, and J.K. Simmons as a grizzly retired miner. You get flashbacks of James and Odin’s military experiences to explain their PTSD and injuries, but no significant roles outside of those three humans. But there are three fully-developed characters in the film – James, Odin, and the beautiful yet unforgiving Alaska wilderness.
Everyone knows the saying “man’s best friend” and we’ve seen these relationships portrayed in books and movies before — Call of the Wild, Marley & Me, Homeward Bound, Old Yeller. How many of those movies or books take out all of the extraneous non-central characters? How many focus on just the relationship between human and canine? While watching James and Odin, I could almost hear their conversations back and forth, like when James tells Odin he needs to cross a rushing creek on a log. “No way, dude.”
The third main character in the movie, the Alaska Wilderness, proved to be a true adversary for James and Odin, throwing obstacle after obstacle their way. Which makes me wonder, is the heart of the beast in the dog, the human, or nature? I kept thinking, they survived war together, and now nature is trying to kill them?
So… who wins? Guess you’ll have to watch to find out. I know, a cop out, but you’ll never get spoilers from me!
Nonetheless, Heart of the Beast is definitely a must-see this year. Top 4 with Tuner, The Odyssey and Project Hail Mary. Send Help and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die would make the Top 10. The Invite comes out next month, so we shall see how it compares.
