At the Movies: Podcast Transcripts

Heart of the Beast & Primetime

Monday, October 26, 2026

Intro

[upbeat music plays]

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

Hello, and welcome to At the Movies with Mike and Marie, a show where two film professors talk about movies. I'm Marie Westhaver.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

And I'm Mike Giuliano.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

And we're going to talk about Heart of the Beast and Primetime today. And these are both movies that center on men whose professional identities involve control. So Mike, set us up first for Heart of the Beast.

[Heart of the Beast]

 

MIKE GIULIANO: 

Well, what's interesting about it in career terms is that Brad Pitt, who's 62 now, is at that point where he still has leading man looks if he cares to have them. But what he's doing is he's taking on a really tough role here. He literally gets down in the mud. He's got some gray in his beard, and he's grizzled, and he wants to be a man trying to make it through the wilderness.

And this is a very primal story. It's really-- the plot summary, in effect, is the whole plot, practically. He's a special forces veteran. He's now retired from the military-- but you don't entirely put that behind you, nor should you-- and he's living up in Alaska. Though, I'll quickly add that the Alaskan wilderness actually was shot in New Zealand. We can maybe talk about the terrain later. But the fact that he's got a small airplane, a Cessna, he's got his dog.

And what's interesting is at least twofold here. One, of course, is that Brad Pitt is getting a really solid role here. He really plays this well. And when I sort of facetiously say he doesn't have the movie star looks because he doesn't want to have them here, he still does have them, actually. He can hold the screen that way, the way a movie star can. In this case, the only competition-- or companion, if you will-- for almost the entire movie is his dog named Odin.

And so James Belmont, the Pitt character, he's traveling alone with the dog and just hanging out, drinking beer, fishing, just sort of enjoying retirement that way. And I don't want to go into too much detail as to what happens, but something bad happens. I'll leave it at that. And when something bad happens, he's literally stranded in the woods. And so the first fold is actually just how well Brad Pitt handles what essentially is-- I was going to say a one-hander. Let's call it a two-hander or a one hand, one paw.

It's a Brad Pitt and his dog, and it's actually quite moving to see the relationship between the master and the dog, if you will, because specifically, not only is the Brad Pitt character James Belmont a veteran-- we assume Iraq/Afghanistan. There are very brief flashbacks, but it's almost all present day action in the woods, where it's really a wilderness survival tale. A man and his dog. That's what it comes down to.

What's actually rather heartwarming about it-- and this is the second fold-- is that not only is James Belmont an army veteran, but so is his dog. This German Shepherd was a combat scout dog. And what I find intriguing about the film, actually-- which, because it's just a man and his dog, there's very little dialogue. He does talk to the dog quite a bit. But both of them are suffering from PTSD. And that explains the-- even by flashback standards, these are flashes. It's just like flashing back to wartime action.

So both he and the dog quite literally have nightmares based on what they went through in the war, and that's a really interesting thing. We tend to think about soldiers still suffering from that, but the dog also is haunted by it. And in terms of what all happens to them out in the woods-- again, I don't want to go into too much detail right now, but it's one thing after another. You've got the environment itself, which can be beautiful but also threatening. You have critters out there in the woods that are out to eat you, basically.

The one thing that bothered me-- and I have a few things that did bother me about the film-- but one is, in a story like this, there's always a bear in the woods. And this movie, this movie has that proverbial scene, a bear in the woods. And it's actually not all that well staged, and it's kind of hokey, actually, the way it plays out. I think this is like what you would expect in a Three Stooges short. You're walking in the woods and here's suddenly a big bear looming over you.

So the movie does have some occasional lapses like that. There's one other major lapse that I'll get into in a little while, but that sort of sets the stage for it because there are only a few human actors in it. So let me turn it over to my other human being here and get your take on it.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

All right. Well, since this is a dog movie, I have to say-- and I don't think I'm giving anything away because it starts at this point-- where it starts at the end, and it shows you the dog. So you know, going into the movie, that the dog survives. And I think that's important because I think dog movies have a problem when you have to go into them not knowing if the dog's going to survive. Because for a lot of people, that's just unbearable. So I will say as a dog movie, it's safe to go see because the dog doesn't die in the movie.

I also want to point out that this dog, his real name is Uber, and he was a search and rescue dog with helicopter experience. So when they were looking for animals to use for the movie, they came across him, and perfect casting. It's also-- we're actually seeing four different dogs. The main one was the dog I just mentioned, Uber. And then there's three other dogs which are his sons, and they all had different handling. So one of them was for the swimming scenes, and one was for the running scenes, and one was for working at heights.

I mean, most of the people who are going to go see this, are going to go see it because it's a dog movie. Brad Pitt is just an extra helping of something good going on because in terms of acting, he's amazing in this.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

Yeah, it's really a very understated, very subtle performance. I mean, that grizzled face he has and the patch of gray in the beard-- he's very capable as a military veteran. And boy, he has to deploy all of his skill set to get through this wilderness. But you're right. Push come to shove, much as I admire Brad Pitt's performance here, it really is a dog movie there.

And I've got to say, putting this in a larger context in terms of dog movies or movies with dogs, I've seen movies where a human character is killed and people just sort of shrug and keep eating their popcorn. But if you kill the dog, oh, there are audible gasps in the audience. Like, human characters can be sacrificed, but don't sacrifice the dog. So--

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

Don't do it.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

--you do make a good observation that way, in terms of what matters. But let me ask you-- I've been in Alaska. I've been in the panhandle at least, and there are forested stretches, like in the Tongass National Forest, that really do pretty much match what we see here. But ultimately, it doesn't matter.

You know why it doesn't matter in terms of the actual terrain? It's beautifully photographed. It's really striking scenery. Whether New Zealand or wherever, it's beautiful scenery. And the movie itself has what I call a generic quality. And usually, when I talk about films, I say that in a disparaging way. It's generic. It's not specific enough. Here, I think it actually plays to advantage.

Like, for instance, when he-- and I guess the dog, too-- have flashbacks to the wartime action, the flashbacks, as I said earlier, are literally flashes. It's like 10 or 20 seconds at most. If you were in a nightmare and suddenly woke up, what would you remember? Just an explosion or someone running, whatever. That's good because I don't think you would want to get sidetracked with any of what I call, quote, unquote, "political considerations". You know what I mean? You don't want to start-- you don't want to relitigate that war. Best just to know, in a generic way, that's what he's coming off of.

Likewise, in the terrain, wherever it was shot and whatever it's supposed to be, I like the fact that it's so generic that it has a-- I hate to use the word like mythic, but it has a kind of storybook quality to it. A man and a dog in the woods, and keep it as simple as you can. When they do encounter other people-- I'm not going to mention someone they encounter near the end of the film because that would be a spoiler. But midway through the film, they do encounter an old codger out in the woods, and he's played very convincingly by JK Simmons, who looks even more grizzled than the Brad Pitt character.

And I got to-- occasionally, I mean, I read film reviews. And occasionally, I quote them verbatim. So let me do that here. Nicolas Rapold, who's a film critic with The New York Times, when he was reviewing this film, he describes what happens-- because it's quite bluntly, you're walking through the woods and suddenly there's a stranger. It's like, who is this guy? And you don't trust each other at first. And if you are stranded in the woods trying to get out, this seems like somebody who probably is at home in the woods. So in this film review from The New York Times, he describes the Simmons character as follows. Quote, "a grizzled stranger who might have walked in from a John Ford Western".

[laughter]

It's a very funny, but it's a very perceptive quote because Simmons, he's there-- initially seems like might even be a threat, or at least a mystery man, but he's essentially there for comic relief. He has a good sense of humor. And the way that Ford would work these quirky, idiosyncratic characters into it-- the old codger who comes wandering in, and lends a laugh to the scene. And I don't know if absolutely the film needs that, but it does benefit, I suppose, because it's never tiresome. It never wears out its welcome.

But after a while it's like, OK, the guy and his dog walking through the woods, and here's a waterfall. Here's a cliff. Here's a bear. Here's some wolves. The full roster. It's like Noah's Ark up there. I mean, the full roster of critters in the woods. And the thing is, if you have all these critters in the woods, the occasional human being is probably a good idea, actually, just to give a sense of how does he interact with other people. He gets along well with his dog. How well does he get along with other people?

And again, that generic quality-- we know very little about James Belmont, the character, when you think about it, other than the war record, in terms of family or this or that. And again, in many films, that would be a deficit. But here, I think it keeps it spare, lean, focused, tightly focused that way. And the film, it's 101 minutes, and that's about the right running time for a story like this. If it went on another 20 minutes, you might start to feel the wear of it, that-- OK, already. So now do you want to hear about my one major reservation about the film?

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

Of course.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

You're going to hear it anyway. Whether you want to or not, you're going to hear it.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

Let's go, Mike.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

OK, here's the deal. Again, it's striking scenery. It's really beautiful. Even when it's threatening, it's really beautifully shot.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

Gorgeous.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

It's really a pleasure to watch. Not that I'd want to be in that scene necessarily for too long, but to see it vicariously. But here's the deal. Oftentimes, it's just the man and his dog walking through a near silent wilderness. And that's how I prefer it. I want to hear the crunch of the twigs under his feet. If there's an owl off to the side, I want to hear it hooting. If there's a wolf approaching, I want to hear that.

And what happens in this film is, this film has a really overbearing musical score. There are many scenes that, for me, were nearly ruined by it. In another kind of movie, you might just say, well, that's Hollywood scoring. Certainly, in the studio era, bombard the audience with that full orchestra. And here, if something's ominous, it's more ominous for me with less music, not more music.

But there are a lot of scenes-- and not just scenes of danger, of imminent danger. There are scenes where he's just walking in the woods, and suddenly you get these crashing notes on the soundtrack, and it's like, all the strings and brass and everyone just tooting away there. To me, it ruins it. It would be as if you were taking a walk in the woods, and you're appreciating nature for what it is, would you want somebody to suddenly walk past you with a boombox or something, and some pop song blaring? Now, it doesn't have pop music in it, but it does have the orchestral equivalent.

Let me get your take on this. Because about halfway through the movie, I mean, my ears had certainly noticed it. But it really actively bothered me, and I honestly felt there were scenes in the film that were ruined by it.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

I think that's a valid point. I would say, though, that I sort of took it as even though he goes to a place that's so remote-- he only runs into two people, literally-- I thought that the soundtrack made it clear that as much as he wanted to get away and calm down and just forget about the bad things that happened in the past, there was a constant cacophony of not being able to do that. And even when he goes to sleep at night in the tent with the dog, one or both of them wake up with nightmares of what happened in the war. So I took it to mean it was like the man really had no peace.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

The pushback is this-- that the flashbacks really are flashes, as I keep saying. They really are just moments there. If the flashbacks went on for five or 10 minutes, it would skew the movie in a way. It would take you back to the war zone, and it would lift it out of the immediacy and the kind of primal quality of being in the woods. And if the music occasionally had the equivalent of that, like the occasional jolt that way-- I mean, that kind of music is appropriate for the flashbacks.

Yes, it's meant to be a sensory overload. But what you're remembering visually and also aurally, I mean, you hear the explosions. You don't just see them. But there are other scenes where basically, it's just the guy walking in the woods or fishing. Let him fish in peace and quiet for a few minutes, you know? He's having a beer. Let him have it. You should be able to have a brewski without 101 strings going along with it.

So that actually did really bother me there. It just seemed like overkill. And it wasn't that actually-- as soundtrack music goes, it wasn't a particularly good score, if I can put it that way. Aesthetically, I mean, it wasn't especially-- I know it's meant to be jarring at times, but it wasn't very skillful, actually, with the way it's composed. That was actually my major reservation. And it actually spoiled a lot of the film for me, the mood. Because this is a mood piece, as much as anything. You want to hear the water. You want to hear the wildlife and so on. And when the music crashes over it-- uh-uh. No, that doesn't work for me.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

I will say that it did remind me of Jack London's Call of the Wild, and also the Channing Tatum movie, Dog.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

That's been compared to Dog, actually. In fact, reviewers in many cases actually mentioned Dog specifically, so you're right.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

And I loved that movie, by the way, because I thought that movie just had so much heart and had moments of humor. There's not a lot of humor in this one. This is really-- you're following a guy around the woods. And the scenery is worth the price of admission. I mean, scenery channel all the way. Absolutely gorgeous. But it's so isolating. It's so terrifying, I think. You're glad that they have each other, the man and the dog. That's like the throughline. It's really about the friendship and bond between the two. That's what makes the movie special, I think.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

Yeah, it's to the film's credit that it's consistent with that. It really is that relationship of man and dog, and it's beautifully handled in the film by the one man and all the dogs-- as you mentioned, the dog family. But again, those most effective moments are the quiet moments, aren't they? Where he and the dog are just alone by a campfire, looking into each other's eyes. Oh, my goodness. Whether you're a dog owner or not, I mean, that gets you when you watch that.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

So I think that Brad Pitt is going to have to duke it out with Robert Pattinson for the Oscar. So we'll move on to Robert Pattinson in Primetime, which, is about Chris Hansen and How To Catch a Predator. Although, it's not really Chris Hansen the man, it's really Chris Hansen, the meme. So set us up for Primetime.

[Primetime]

 

MIKE GIULIANO: 

Well, again, since we have these two movie stars to link together, just as Brad Pitt's been making some bold career choices in middle age-- of course, Rob Pattinson's considerably younger, so he's not facing that yet. And yet, they both have these-- I'll call them pretty boy backgrounds. Handsome actors. You expect them in a romantic lead and oftentimes, lighter roles, and so on.

But Robert Pattinson's been playing some edgier roles. You think of a film like Mickey 17, and so on. And he's taken on some stuff here. He is really effective as Chris Hansen because Chris Hansen, as presented here, is not sympathetic, not meant to be. And Pattinson just goes all out with it. It's one of those possessed performances, where he's so hyperactive. He's so villainous and so selfish and self-absorbed, and all that.

But the factual basis for it is that, of course, Chris Hansen was doing To Catch A Predator for NBC Dateline. It ran 2004-2007. That's the timeline here. It's a period piece, in that respect. And essentially, it tracks his career that way. And the modus operandi-- I mean, how this show actually worked, in terms of having decoys who would troll and lure for child predators. And then, of course, when the predator shows up for the quote, unquote, "date", there's Chris Hansen bursting into the room saying, you're on camera, and this and that. And the police are out in the yard, that kind of thing.

Now, I had a lot of serious reservations about this film. One of them has to do with, well, how are we meant to feel about Chris Hansen? He's not exactly a reflective, self-reflective character. Self-absorbed? Yes. Self-reflective? No. And he presents himself as a moral crusader, and the film does a good job of showing him to be a hypocrite that way because he's got an adulterous affair in his own marriage, and just his basic personality is so despicable at times. He's in it for the ratings. But there are other aspects of the film where I feel like it's not fully examined.

Because he's not going to fully examine himself, there are a number of secondary characters. What the film really needs and doesn't quite have is somebody who would really call him out, in the sense of calling our attention, as well, to some serious ethical concerns with his behavior and with the overall scheme of this particular show. And the film never quite does that. What the film does is, it takes you into the actual routine of how you make a show like this.

And it's interesting at first, but it starts to wear out its welcome even at that level because once you've had a few stings, it's just like-- OK, another one, another one, another one. It's like, you know it, at that point. And in staging it this way, the film itself emulates what I call the razzle dazzle quality of To Catch a Predator. I mean, hyperactive camerawork and editing, and it has the pace and the aura of a trash TV aesthetic. And that can work for a few scenes, but when you get into a film that's really fully feature length, it starts to wear out for me. So that's one serious reservation I had about it.

Even more serious by way of reservation is the way To Catch a Predator was put together, it's presenting itself as a news show. But of course, it's chasing the ratings as much as it's chasing predators. And so, well, ultimately, isn't it more entertainment? And nowadays, it might seem quaint to ask for some sort of distinction to be made between news and entertainment within TV programming. But certainly, when this show first aired-- which is now 20 years ago-- that was something relatively fresh. Now, maybe we just kind of shrug and say, well, that's how it is.

But that's a reservation I had. No characters in the film, I think, fully voiced that. Like, oh, are we a news show? Are we entertainment? Is it right what we're doing? Correspondingly, in this news show, they obviously have to work very closely and collaborate with the police. So just as we wonder what are his real motives, what are the police's motives? There's a sheriff towards the end who wants to make a big arrest and is gung ho, but isn't he looking for the police equivalent of high ratings?

And again, to the film's credit, I suppose-- yeah, it prompts you to think about that. But I wish characters within the film thought about it more, or at least a character. I don't mean you need somebody making a sermon. You don't need some character standing up and pointing out the obvious there, that kind of soapbox thing. But you need somebody. And that somebody could be, what if you had an additional character who was like a TV critic or a media columnist-- or something like that-- that could pop up and at least raise some of these issues?

The film is loaded with what I call ethical and legal concerns. In terms of the guys they're targeting, yes, they're deserving of this. And the way that the show does its trolling, of course, it's mostly online. You're texting with someone. You're trying to draw the person out. You're trying to make a date with decoys. So they show up for the decoy, and then there's the sting, both with Chris Hansen and with the cops, and so on.

In some cases, it's like what I call an open and shut legal case. Some of the texts are so blatant, so obscene, just so disgusting that it's like, this guy should be arrested. Like, however, you have to do it, get this guy in handcuffs. There are some others, though, that are a bit more in what I would call a gray zone. I think a defense attorney could take this to court and make a really strong case that it was or verged on entrapment, in some cases.

If somebody shows up at the door and the decoy lets them in, and the guy says-- oh, hi, nice to meet you. And the decoy says, well, I'm in the kitchen. Come on in the kitchen. And the guy says, OK. If, at that point, Chris Hansen suddenly pops out and announces who he is and that this guy is going to be under arrest and so on, has anything wrong been done at that point? Know what I'm getting at? This is where a defense attorney could make a really strong case in court that it might well actually be entrapment, or at least not an open and shut case there.

In that respect, you got to really wonder, who's the real villain here? I know that Hansen's presented in a very unsympathetic light, but to some extent, we're tracking with him. We're tracking down these bad guys who should be arrested, I would say, in almost every case. Or in any event, they're culpable. But who's the real villain? I mean, is it the predators or is it the man who's out to catch the predators?

And by the end of the film-- and not to spoil anything there, but the film never fully explores any of that. It skims the surface. It's all that razzle dazzle surface, that hyperactivity of the cinema-- if you will-- in terms of quick pans and flashes here and there with the camera, helter skelter editing, Chris Hansen shouting into the microphone kind of thing. And it never really pauses for a breath where someone would say, well, wait a minute. What is actually really going on here? And if we're going to cast blame-- and this movie is begging you to cast blame, but where should we cast it? And the film, I think, just essentially bails out. It takes a bold subject and then wimps out, I think.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

They definitely show you that Chris Hansen wanted to be Stone Phillips so bad, he could taste it. But you have to ask yourself, who chooses to do this kind of thing and then televise it? There's a question there, just about how you end up doing that kind of work to begin with.

There is a throughline that is getting what you want at the expense of others, and you see that with Chris Hansen. You see that with his producer, who's played by Merritt Wever, who is so good in this. And I loved her so much in Nurse Jackie as Zoe, and it's a completely different role. So great to see her in that role. Also, if you remember the little kid from Jerry Maguire, he plays Whipped Cream Guy. So, a little surprise there. There is a scene where--

MIKE GIULIANO: 

We won't go into detail about that.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

No. Kind of self-explanatory, without even having to say anything. There is a character that is one of the predators who is a rabbi, who does say to Chris Hansen, who gave you the right to do this? He does get in his face. I think that's one of the things that makes the movie unsettling and interesting, is that you're not sure who you are supposed to be rooting for.

Yes, you want all the predators to be gathered up and put away. But there's nobody there to really set any sort of boundary when you've gone too far, or where you've wandered out into something where this is going to be litigious. So that is, I think, part of the design. I don't know that it works very well all of the time.

I will say that I thought that the Decoy Dan character was really the emotional heart of the film because he wants to be an actor. He's doing this to try to get his Screen Actors Guild card. So it's not that he has bad intentions, but he gets drawn into something where he slowly starts to realize what it is costing him as a person. So that, I thought, was how they kind of handled when is somebody going to tell Chris Hansen that maybe this isn't such a great idea?

MIKE GIULIANO: 

Well, yeah. You've identified two things I do like about the film. The scene with the rabbi, with Talmudic wisdom. He takes it into a dialectic there. And that's a really fascinating scene because he does actually directly question him on that. But the scene only lasts for a few minutes, right? The film needs a little bit more of that, or a lot more of that.

And then secondly, I agree very strongly, this is a really well acted film. Whatever reservations I have about it-- and there are numerous-- right down the line, it's well acted. So there are two primary decoys. There's Decoy Del played by Phoebe Bridgers, and there's Decoy Dan played by Skyler Gisondo, and really fine performances there.

And particularly with Decoy Dan, you realize how this naive, ambitious 23-year-old wants to be an actor, get his SAG card-- how you can get pulled into something like that. And as he starts to have reservations about it, even if they're not fully voiced, you sense them. You know that this kid's conflicted. And if the film had a bit more of that-- but where it also needs more of is, doubling back in my earlier point, it needs more of it at the level of somebody-- a network executive, a newspaper TV columnist, or an op-ed writer-- somebody at that sort of level actually openly questioning this and raising those issues. The rabbi is actually the closest we come to that.

And again, I'm not sure the film itself knows exactly what it wants to say. Know what I'm getting at? I think the film gets caught up in the frenzy of the chase, if you will. I don't think they've really thought it through as to, what are we saying here? What do we want people to take away from this? And I'm often OK with films that are somewhat open ended that way, like, will leave it to us to decide. But this is where I feel like it's a cop out on their part. They've immersed us in this maelstrom of media frenzy and just left us there.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

You know, one of the things I think was a big missed opportunity was I felt like at the end-- because we are talking about a TV show that was very successful for a while, and it's sort of a movie about that. At the end, I wanted the scene that would say, To Catch a Predator was on the air for X number of years and caught X number of predators. Where are they now? And then say, Chris Hansen is now living in wherever he's living. Decoy Dan represents X number of actors that were used in the thing. You know what I mean? I felt like they didn't place it in context of, OK, we just showed you a reenactment of what used to be, But then just leaves you there without the "where are they now".

MIKE GIULIANO: 

Well, you know what's paradoxical about this and really bizarre in some ways? The director of the film, Lance Oppenheim, has a background in making documentary movies where such things would be done and shared. This is his first feature film, and it's almost as if-- and I don't want to do armchair psychoanalysis on him, but it's almost as if somehow he's put the documentary qualities behind him, though he might not fully realize it, because he just gives you the hyperactivity of a feature film about catching predators.

Whereas the documentarian would want to do exactly what you just asked him before, right? Where are they now? How long the show run? Ratings? And in some cases, you might want to know what happened to some of these predators in terms of, what, a prison sentence. In one case, suicide, we do know. But what happened to some of the TV personalities here?

Now, these are fictional characters, in many cases. But that's where you have to decide how to handle that. Like, do you want to point out the real life models for them, or at least give us the outcomes for the fictional characters? The film just basically bails out. It just sort of leaves all that hanging.

MARIE WESTHAVER:  

It does. Well, that does bring us to the end of this episode, but we'll see you next time at the movies.

MIKE GIULIANO: 

See you then.

Outro

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Heart of the Beast & Primetime