Review: A dog steals 'Heart of the Beast' while Brad Pitt's charm is kept on leash

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred Something’s in the air this fall — and it’s not just the autumnal chill.For some reason, survival thrillers are all the rage; there are even two featuring a man and his dog.

First, we had Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars” with Jacob Elordi and a Belgian Malinois traversing a postapocalyptic landscape.The latest is “Heart of the Beast,” an Alaskan-set story about two combat veterans — one human, one canine — who set out for a post-retirement camping trip and find themselves in a perilous situation after the human, retired Special Forces officer James (Brad Pitt), suffers a heart attack while piloting his seaplane.

James and his combat dog Odin survive the crash, just barely, but they’re stranded deep in the wilderness, miles from civilization.The film is directed by David Ayer, a purveyor of wild action flicks and ballads of masculinity; the screenplay is the debut effort of Cameron Alexander.Their intent is to deliver something muscle-bound and emotional — if a man can’t cry about an Army dog, what can he cry about? But until the last two minutes of the film, “Heart of the Beast” is essentially “Homeward Bound” for adults.

You know, the 1993 kids adventure film featuring a golden retriever, a bulldog and a cat named Sassy who have to make their way home through the wild.Marry the structure of that film with a Jack London-inspired milieu, add some blood, gore and rather cheesy Iraq war flashbacks, and you have “Heart of the Beast.” Movies From a new “Resident Evil” reboot from the director of “Weapons” to Oscar contenders starring Mikey Madison and Tom Cruise, here are the movies we’ll be at this fall.We watch James as he’s rained on, chewed on, pulls trunks out of an icy lake, falls off a log, breaks his arm, faces down a bear, fights off wolves, sustains many head injuries and inexplicably keeps going, in hopes of saving if not himself his d...