Well, I don't want to spoil the whole movie for you, but it's not quite accurate to call it a survival drama. Remember my synopsis of another brutal Brad Pitt flick, Ad Astra? I quote myself: "A man travels 2.7 billion miles to find his absentee father, only to learn that the old man doesn't care to have a relationship with him." Well, this movie is almost as much of a one-man show as that one was. It's long stretches of one dude (Pitt) alone in the Alaskan wilderness with his dog, credited on screen as Odin (actually the name of the dog character, played by four actual dogs), suffering in seemingly every conceivable way. And yet despite the ending, at which I have already hinted too much, you come out of this movie feeling altogether better than from Ad Astra. Man and dog go through hell on earth (I emphasize, on earth), yet somehow their lack of human company and the, um, incomplete fulfillment of their quest doesn't leave you depressed. I would even say there's something uplifting about it. And it's all about the fully believable love story between Jim, the human, and Odin, the dog.
There are a few other human characters in the movie. Canadian First Nations actress Anna Lambe has a tiny role in a scene that frames the main body of the movie. J.K. Simmons appears in approximately one scene, and says probably 50% of the entire movie's dialogue, as a guy in a canoe who crosses paths by chance with Jim and Odin just before the feces hits the air circulation device, though (you may be surprised to learn) it's none of his fault. A seaplane is the next most important character, other than Army guys glimpsed in PTSD flashbacks (backstory for the combat veteran man and dog), and I won't conceal from you that when said plane crashes, it's no fault of the plane's or even the storm Jim has just flown it through. Dude straight-up has a heart attack at the yoke, and it's amazing that he survives the initial crash and how hard he fights to save himself and his dog from their seemingly inevitable doom in the back of nowhere, 49th Stately speaking.
What do they survive? Well, not just the crash itself, and the heart attack that led to it, but also starvation, painful trips and falls, probably hypothermia, attacks by a bear and a pack of wolves, a perilous crossing over a whitewater gorge that doesn't go to plan, griveous injuries, strenuous passages through almost every kind of difficult terrain, etc., etc., etc. How many things go smoothly for them? Not a single one. But do they give up? Well ... not on each other. And the way they look at each other, and the way they talk to each other (within a given definition of "talk"), is so tender it'll go right to your heart. Whatever this is a tale of, and it's not entirely one of survival, it has healing from trauma and, above all, friendship in it. Across a landscape that feels like a very big, very real place, this seemingly very real man – not altogether lovable – and his completely lovable dog struggle together, struggle to save something, and the movie is well crafted to keep you hanging on what they do save, if anything.
Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) The crash sequence, a total nailbiter in which you wonder how either of the hero pair can possibly survive. (2) In another callback to Ad Astra, specifically to its gruesomely clinical specificity, Pitt self-administers a medical procedure that requires Odin's assistance, sparing the audience not one awful detail of his disturbingly realistic ordeal. (3) The last moments the man and his dog share with each other, in which their mutual love reaches an emotionally devastating level. Moral: See this, not that Aaron Sorkin thing. Facebook, shmacebook!
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