Brad Pitt only has eyes for his dog in Heart of the Beast

Now that the paperwork around the end of his marriage to Angelina Jolie has been tied up at last, Brad Pitt is starring in one of the most divorced films ever made. Director David Ayer’s best feature since 2014’s Fury (which also starred Pitt), this survival thriller is a grizzled hymn to middle-aged, solo male resilience. It is also a celebration of the bond between a soldier and his faithful service dog, which the film paints as the deepest, most dependable and spiritually nourishing relationship that a man could possibly have.

I mean, who needs a woman when you have a creature like Odin in your life – bright of eye, fleet of paw and sumptuous of coat? This magnificent beast, played by an Alsatian called Uber (one hopes that he wasn’t named after the minicab app), accompanies his master, Pitt’s special forces veteran James Belmont, on an Alaskan camping trip.

Naturally, disaster strikes: Belmont’s dinky seaplane comes down in a storm, stranding both hero and hound in the North American wilds, with only limited supplies. But using their extensive experience of war and drawing on a bottomless well of mutual respect and affection, the two strike out on the perilous 58-mile trek back to civilised land.

The sheer simplicity of this scenario is as refreshing as dipping your feet into a stream. JK Simmons brings craggy charisma to a small supporting role as a wandering woodsman, and there is a nice, even smaller part for the Inuit actress Anna Lambe in the film’s brief prologue and closing scenes. But otherwise, we get just over an hour and a half of one man and his dog – plus sundry wildlife, much of it hungry – with breathtakingly photographed wilderness landscapes (the film was shot on New Zealand’s South Island) that demand to be seen on a proper cinema screen.

As Once Upon a Time in Hollywood amply proved, Pitt plus dog is a winning formula that doesn’t require much embellishment, and in Heart of the Beast it is again a joy to behold. You feel a soulful connection between actor and animal that goes beyond performance; whenever one instinctively helps out the other, manly tears are liable to flow. (This must be the most mercilessly effective canine weepie since Marley & Me.)