“Heart of the Beast”
The vast wilds of Alaska are where James Belmont (Brad Pitt) goes to tamp down the PTSD he suffered as a former special ops sergeant, as well as heal the war scars of his loyal German Shepherd Odin, who served with Belmont during multiple Middle East tours. The two are flying around the wilds of the 49th state to do some birding, fishing and communing with nature.
Odin’s scars are more visible: titanium fangs (someone smashed him with a brick during combat) and a prosthetic paw. Belmont matter-of-factly says he shot the responsible parties “in the head” during a campfire encounter with a jovial old coot also roaming the wilds, played by none other than the baritone-blessed J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash”). The two enjoy some tasty Belgian beers and go their separate ways in the morning as a storm is closing in.
From there “Heart of the Beast” becomes one long perilous survival journey after Belmont suffers a heart attack (if the storm don’t get you cardiac arrest will) and the plane goes down. Frigid lake waters revive Belmont. He and Odin go on to endure encounters with bears, wolves and moose (oh my!), not to mention steep ravines and white-water rapids. Through all this, man and best friend seemingly have nine lives, in part because they take turns saving each other’s lives (the dog may get a tad more screen time than Pitt).
This is the second pooch-and-person flick in two months, after August’s “The Dog Stars,” directed by Ridley Scott. This one, thankfully, spares us the human actor (in “Dog Stars” it’s Jacob Elordi) over-explaining the plot to the canine actor. This one is also set on Earth where the sweeping mountainous terrain of Alaska does a lot of cinematic heavy lifting.
Unfortunately, “Heart” suffers from woeful computer FX to conjure the tooth and clawed furries of the wild — if he was still alive, Bart the Bear (from 1997’s “The Edge”) would have been a massive upgrade. The movie pretends to be a based on true-events kind of film, but it’s not, which makes the sepia-tinted flashbacks to war time both disruptive and unnecessary. Still, Pitt and Odin (played mostly by a dog named Uber) convincingly sell the deep connection of two beings who have seen the worst of the world and are seeking peace and solace both from within and through each other.
Playing at Apple Cinemas Cambridge, AMC Assembly Row 12 and Kendall Square Cinema
“Unabomber”
The performance of previously under-the radar actor Jacob Tremblay is the primary reason to see “Unabomber,” Janus Metz’s unsettling look at Ted Kaczynski’s early years as a Harvard prodigy and the manhunt for the domestic terrorist he became. The actor, who broke through as the captive child in “Room” (2015), is remarkable here, anchoring a film whose competing storylines don’t always serve each other.
Kaczynski entered Harvard at age 16 in the late 1950s, where he comes under the influence of psychologist Henry Murray (Russell Crowe), whose controversial experiments provide the film with its troubling center. Murray at first seems like an ideal surrogate father figure for the brash but impressionable Kaczynski, whose parents — as depicted — are often critical and dismissive of their son’s academic goals. Home ultimately proves to be the better — or more honest— place, as much of what Murray and his team do to Kaczynski is essentially hazing and meddling with a young and troubled mind. Metz and his writers Sam Chalsen and Nelson Greaves don’t draw a direct line between Kaczynski’s treatment and his becoming the Unabomber, but the movie strongly suggests Murray and Harvard sowed the seeds to put Kaczynski on the fast track to misanthropic mayhem. (Though nominally set here in Cambridge, Montreal and McGill University stand in for our humble burg and Harvard.)
The film’s parallel thread plays out in 1996, after the Unabomber had killed three people and maimed dozens via postal bombs over a 16-year span. Shailene Woodley as Joanne Miller, a fictional FBI agent, uses profiling tools to pursue Kaczynski while also fighting off microaggressions and bureaucracy. The investigative manhunt supplies necessary background information but also feels tacked on and distracts from the compelling, disturbing drama playing out at Harvard.
The question of how a gifted teenager became a terrorist is an enormous one, and psychological experiments alone can’t settle it. Crowe, following “Nuremberg” (2025) and recent release “The Weight,” again finds fertile ground in a smartly drawn dark part. He’s a considerable plus, and the psychological chess-game pairing with Tremblay gives the film its strongest pull. But what gives “Unabomber” its force is Tremblay. What holds it back is how often the film pulls away from him.
Streaming on Netflix
A stronger
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