Heart of the Beast review – Brad Pitt survivalist dogmance serves up wilderness with side of cheese

Pitt and loyal hound Odin get stuck in remote Alaska in this serviceable adventure with hints of Jack London and Marley & Me One man and his dog have an amazing adventure in this survivalist drama starring Brad Pitt, from screenwriter Cameron Alexander and director David Ayer, for which the first and last words of the title have been carefully chosen to signal a mix of sentimentality and thrills.

It’s an entertaining anthro-canine-mance, with man and dog relating to each other on a deep level … kind of like Owen Wilson in Marley & Me , only without Jennifer Aniston, or Bernie Winters and Schnorbitz, only without the devastating melancholy. Pitt, who last worked with Ayer on the second world war action thriller Fury , plays a US military special forces veteran called Belmont, tough, self-reliant and laconically good-humoured in the classic Pitt manner, now spending his retirement roaming the…