Film reviews: Brad Pitt, alien chaos and the return of Jane Austen

HEART OF THE BEAST (12A, 101 mins) ***

New Zealand’s stupendous wilderness is the stand-in backdrop for an outdoor Alaskan adventure that will try to tug at the heartstrings of anyone who has ever had total faith in the loyalty of a pet.

Special Forces veteran James Belmont (Brad Pitt) faces a battle for survival with his beloved ex-combat German Shepherd – which already has a damaged leg and some titanium teeth to go with its never-say-die heart of a lion.

Ordinarily, Odin is a god in Norse mythology, but here it’s the name of a dog – with an undying sense of duty.

Belmont and Odin (real name Uber) have both been traumatised by previous adventures, but now they face a joint battle to save each other, to avoid becoming the last one left without the other for comfort.

As a director, David Ayers has never consistently lived up to the promise of Street Kings (2008) and End of Watch (2012) and, of course, he’s battling to survive here in icily cold filmmaking terms just as much as his cast.

That the physical challenge is met head-on is chiefly thanks to the skills of Mauro Fiore, cinematographer for Training Day (2001), Avatar (2009) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2019).

As a man-and-dog movie, Heart of the Beast will appeal to anyone who loves to take their hound on long, rugged walks, or even if your favourite types of film are adapted likes of Jack London’s Call of the Wild (1935) or White Fang (1991).

Best seen recently at his A-list handsome best in F1 (2025), Pitt looks unusually weathered for this role and he maintains his screen presence without trying to look pretty for the sake of it. He will have surely learned far more from Uber than vice versa.

Emotionally, this is no match for Richard Gere’s Japanese story of Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009). Pitt’s struggle is also neither as visceral as Emile Hirsch’s weight-loss descent during Into The Wild (2007) nor as compelling as Leonardo DiCaprio’s bear necessities adventure in The Revenant (2015).

And, as an actor mostly working alone, Pitt cannot match Tom Hanks in Cast Away (2000) nor Robert Redford in All Is Lost (2013), but at least this never feels way overlong like his ultimate plod-fest, Seven Years in Tibet (1997).

I was truly hoping to give Heart of the Beast at least four stars in sheer admiration for the effort and talent required to pull it off, but there are two reasons why it loses one of them.

The ‘plot’ by debut writer Cameron Alexander seriously undermines the emotional pay-off by the time the end credits roll and, though clearly no fault of director Ayers, Ridley Scott’s overly similar The Dog Stars was only released exactly a month ago. Naughty boy Ridley, now 88, for getting his dog-in-a-plane story into cinemas first!

HOPE (15, 157 mins) ****

This South Korean sci-fi thriller by writer-director Na Hong-jin is almost twice as long as the U-rated Shaun The Sheep, which currently has a strange creature (aka Farmer) worrying the local sheep.

Paced 100 times faster, Hope’s alternative sense of threat features the local police in a remote harbour settlement called Hope investigating the growing havoc in their midst after a cow is found ‘ripped’ but not eaten.

Featuring an east-west cast including Michael Fassbender as alien warrior Ma’veyyo and real-life spouse Alicia Vikander as the equally costumed empress J’aur, it turns out that the exciting trailer outperforms the film itself.

But despite some dodgy (or should that be endearingly old school?) CGI monster techniques, there’s no denying Na Hong-jin’s ambition – especially when several extended car chase sequences include one featuring a horse with a desperate rider running alongside.

As an entertaining companion piece for Bong Joon Ho’s superior thriller The Host (2006) – when a monster from Seoul’s Han River went on the rampage – it’s refreshing to see another World Cinema, black comedy Godzilla-style interpretation of the darker side of life.

AI reportedly threatens to consume all of us for real but, here, Hope really does spring eternal.

SENSE & SENSIBILITY (U,132 mins)

Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean, 2022) returns with her second feature to direct Esmé Creed-Miles, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, James Carcaterra, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Caitríona Balfe in the latest adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel from 1811.

Released in February 1996, Ang Lee’s U-rated, 136-minute version starred Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood, with Kate Winslet as younger sister Marianne, whose sudden destitution meant that marriage would be the siblings’ best route to financial security. Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman co-starred and the film won seven Oscar nominations, including best picture.

Moreover, having already won a best actress Oscar for Howards End (1992), it then made Sense for Thompson to become the first star to also win an Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

To make a new version just 30 years later illustrates the paucity of original scripts in Hollywood. One assumes that the new film’s co-producers Working Title have long wished they had made the 1995 version, given their familiarity with its cast.

Not previewed at the time of writing, the new Sense & Sensibility opens on Friday, 25, when you can see how it compares.

AVENGERS: ENDGAME ENCORE (12A, 187 minutes) ****

Following on from Infinity War (2018) and originally released in 2019, Marvel Studios’ Avengers are back to battle Thanos, with added scenes gobbling up even more time on IMAX screens. Still, this is a great catch-up opportunity for under-16s ahead of the next film, Avengers: Doomsday, opening on Friday, December 18, and its Secret Wars sequel on December 17, 2027.

Reviewing films in Birmingham since 1989, Graham Young is a former UK Regional Film Journalist of the Year and three-time runner-up.