Film Review of the Week

Drama

Heart Of The Beast (12A)

Review: Owning a pet is a special kind of love story, every bit as intense as matters of the human heart. Director David Ayer’s slow-burning survival thriller cherishes the deep bond between a retired US army special forces operative and a German Shepherd, who served alongside him, as they navigate a treacherous snow-laden wilderness to find their way back to humanity. Mother Nature is every bit as merciless and unforgiving as the enemies who appear in blurry flashbacks to their hellish tours of duty.

Ayer reunites with actor Brad Pitt, more than a decade after they waged war against the Nazis in a Sherman tank in Fury. He plays former green beret James Belmont, who bears the physical scars of combat, while his four-legged companion Odin (Uber) experiences night-time bouts of PTSD that require kind words and a gentle touch to keep the demons at bay. James and Odin eke out a simple existence of mutual healing and understanding, and they travel in James’s seaplane to camp beneath the stars in the Alaskan wilderness. Aside from a brief interaction with a poetry-loving traveller (JK Simmons), who predicts “a good hard-nosed spring storm” on the horizon, man and dog are alone with their thoughts.

Predicted storm clouds gather, forcing James and Odin to abandon camp. During the flight home, James suffers a heart attack. The plane crashes through trees into a river and James and Odin both emerge from the wreckage relatively unscathed, stranded 58 miles from safety. Drawing on their training, they battle against the elements and ferocious wildlife to chart a haphazard route back to a society that discarded them once their bodies were broken.

Heart Of The Beast opens with a startling image then rewinds seven days, making abundantly clear from the outset how James and Odin’s gruelling odyssey will end. Forewarned is certainly forearmed with hankies and screenwriter Cameron Alexander spends 90 minutes winding up for the sledgehammer blow that we know is coming but hits with devastating power regardless.

Pitt may be 62 years old but he performs most of his own stunts and he conjures a striking balance between the raw, sweat-soaked physicality of the role and the tenderness in his interactions with canine co-star Uber. He is a magnetic screen presence and chemistry with Pitt lends credibility to the characters being partners in service since Odin was a pup. Cinematographer Mauro Fiore captures the treacherous beauty of New Zealand’s landscapes, doubling for Alaska. Alexander’s script makes some curious choices in the final stretch to engineer a Revenant-style clash between man and native predators, shot from above for maximum visceral impact, but Ayer’s picture earns its emotional payoff by a wet nose.

Sci-Fi

Hope (15)

Review: Appearances are deliberately deceptive in the most expensive film shot in Korea. Punctuated by protracted and breathlessly staged action set pieces that reduce entire villages to rubble and twisted metal strewn with mangled human corpses, Hope imagines hellish first contact with alien visitors in a quaint village nestled close to the demilitarised zone separating the north and south. Writer-director Na Hong-jin slyly defies expectations with tried and tested genre tropes in a bloodthirsty battle royale between puny humans and otherworldly warriors reminiscent of the Predator and Transformers films.

Hope Harbor’s beleaguered police chief Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) responds to a call from local hunter Ko Sung-ki (Zo In-sung) about dead livestock in the middle of a road. A quick examination of the eviscerated animal reveals deep claw marks, which are initially attributed to a tiger. Sung-ki and friends head to nearby woods to stalk and kill the big cat to prevent further loss of life. “When nature called, she yelled,” pithily observes Bum-seok. The police chief drives back into his village and witnesses the true cause of the cattle’s grisly demise: a powerful and seemingly indestructible humanoid intent on killing every human in its path. Bum-seok joins forces with one of the few survivors of the rampage, retired colonel Ahn Nak-yeon (Lee Sang-hee), and calls in reinforcements from trigger-happy rookie police officer Sung-ae (Hoyeon) to neutralise the threat.

Socially awkward carpenter Yang-bae (Eum Moon-suk) provides shocking evidence that the monster may originate from another planet and it is not alone. The woods where Sung-ki and co have ventured may be home to four more creatures, J’aur (Alicia Vikander), Ai’dovor (Taylor Russell), Ma’veyyo (Michael Fassbender) and Va’migere (Cameron Britton).

Hope seems an ironic title for an impressively staged demonstration of widescale carnage that delights in slow-motion close-ups of hapless homo sapiens being squashed, impaled and tossed through the air like rag dolls. Hong-jin choreographs jaw-dropping set-pieces with delirious aplomb, including a nerve-jangling sprint through labyrinthine village alleyways that provides more than one jump scare.

Hong-jin’s increasingly unhinged script balances bombastic thrills with off-kilter comedy, painting Bum-seok as a sunglass-clad buffoon who survives by good fortune rather than skill. He’s the exasperated butt of several droll jokes. A glaring absence of nuanced character detail is frustrating and, presumably, deliberate to allow the filmmaker to perform a narrative rug pull in the final 15 minutes that clearly tees up a sequel. With a running time just over two-and-a-half hours, Hope could be tightened in the opening hour and Hong-jin’s artistic ambitions occasionally exceed the grasp of the armies of animators in charge of seamlessly melding digitally rendered beasts and live action elements. You can see the joins in the slam-bang spectacle.

Romance

Sense And Sensibility (U)

Review: Director Georgia Oakley goes back to nature for an unsentimental and sincere spin on Jane Austen’s first novel, working from a script written by Diana Reid which will be invariably measured against Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning screenplay from more than 30 years ago. If Ang Lee’s witty waltz through Dashwood family matters was sun-dappled, swooning and sweet, this next generation edition contemplates affairs of the heart under moody, overcast skies and assiduously avoids replicating crowd-pleasing grand flourishes.

John Dashwood (Tom Brooke) honours a deathbed promise to his late father to take care of his stepmother (Catriona Balfe) and half-sisters Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Marianne (Esme Creed-Miles) and Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) at the family home in Norland. John’s wife Fanny (Stacy Martin) exerts her influence to ensure the Dashwood women’s inheritance is greatly reduced and she publicly voices displeasure when her brother Edward Ferrars (George MacKay) demonstrates a romantic interest in Elinor, whom she derides as “a penniless woman”.

Elinor keeps her emotions tightly corseted, unlike sister Marianne, who is unapologetically wild and free-spirited. She denounces caution when it comes to her heart’s fate. “If I’m to fall, I’d rather it be from a great height,” she declares. Thus, when family friend Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum) earnestly courts Marianne, her eyes are drawn instead to charismatic John Willoughby (Frank Dillane). After the Dashwoods relocate to Barton Cottage in Devonshire to escape Fanny’s poison, Elinor and Marianne accept an offer from gossipy widow Mrs Jennings (Fiona Shaw) to accompany her to London for a dizzying whirl through the capital’s social set. One suitor shows his unflattering true colours and Lucy Steele (Ceara Coveney) deliberately breaks another heart by maliciously revealing a secret engagement.

Sense And Sensibility is an assured rifle through the well-thumbed pages of Austen, distinguished by the earthy, muted tones of cinematographer Arnaud Potier, who relishes the flickers and shadows of natural light. The opening image of Marianne lying in a field, listening to distant chirrups on the wind, establishes a visual palette and penchant for pastoral ruggedness that carries through the next two hours.

Creed-Miles is a whirling dervish and her untamed exuberance is a striking counterpoint to the inner turmoil that swirls behind the eyes of Edgar-Jones’s sibling. The actors are handsomely matched. Shaw makes hay with an infectious chortle, scene-stealing with deceptive ease. Male characters are less impactful – screen chemistry between Edgar-Jones and MacKay achieves a polite simmer. My heart is, and always will be, enamoured with Ang Lee’s version of Austen, replete with detours from the source text. Oakley’s version failed to woo me with the same fervour. Neither my sense nor my sensibility came undone.