PLOT: After his ex-wife dies, a father (Idris Elba) takes his two daughters (Iyana Halley & Leah Sava Jeffries) to South Africa to stay with his best friend, a wildlife biologist (Sharlto Copley). While visiting a remote reserve, the group is attacked by a ferocious lion, who’s on the warpath after vicious poachers massacred his pride.
REVIEW: Beast is a highly effective little thriller. While some may bristle at the idea of yet another “animal gone rogue” movie, under the eye of director Baltasar Kormákur and producer Will Packer, Beast makes the distinction that there’s no such thing as an “evil” animal. Instead, the lion hunting our heroes has been traumatized by the movie’s true villains, poachers, who massacred his pride to sell them off as trophies. No, this lion is simply butchering any human it crosses paths with, as it can’t distinguish between good and bad guys. We’re all bad guys to this lion.
In a way, our hero, Idris Elba’s Nate, isn’t that different from the lion, as, in the end, they have the same objective – to protect their family. All that aside, Kormákur has assembled one heck of a late summer sleeper. Running a taut ninety minutes Beast is a thrill ride from start to finish. It’s loaded with excitement and carnage and fully delivers on the trailer’s promise that it would eventually feature Idris Elba taking on a lion in a mano-a-mano showdown. It’s Elba’s most effective big-screen star vehicle to date.
While emphasizing thrills, the screenplay by Ryan Engle and Jamie Primak Sullivan is better than average, giving our hero and his family a solid backstory. Elba’s character is not an idealized father. We learn early on that he divorced his wife, only for her to immediately succumb to cancer afterward, leaving him something of a heel in his children’s eyes. He’s trying to redeem himself by taking them back to their mother’s homeland but is still a stubborn guy who doesn’t treat them with the respect Sharlto Copley’s Martin does, with the girls quickly warming to their adopted uncle.
Of course, once the shit goes down and Elba and the girls are separated from the heroic Martin, Elba’s got to show what he’s made of, and his transformation from milquetoast doctor to rough and tumble action hero is well conveyed, and not immediate. There’s a funny line where one of his daughters admonishes him for not knowing how to hotwire a truck, one of those things all action heroes just know what to do. His response to her is great – “sorry, I went to medical school.”
Elba is excellent in the lead, and the two girls playing his daughters are just as good. Lyana Halley is the more rebellious, older daughter, while Leah Sava Jeffries is the younger one. When departing from the norm, none are overly precocious or too whiny. Once things get bad, their issues are tabled, and they work together to survive.
Sharlto Copley also has a strong role as Elba’s former friend, depicted as a very positive influence on the girls and a hero in his own right. He’s also how the filmmakers ultimately set up their strong anti-poaching message, with him quickly reminding everyone that lions don’t hunt humans for sport and that the titular beast is a victim too. Throughout the film, he remains the voice of reason lest the film gets too close to demonizing lions, a nice touch that grounds the film.
It also helps that the CGI used to depict the lions is far better than you’d expect for a movie that reportedly only costs around 30-40 million (it looks like it costs way more). It’s also beautifully shot on location in parts of South Africa and has a good score by Gravity’s Steven Price.
All things considered, Beast is slam-bang late summer entertainment. It has a top-shelf cast, excellent production values, and a solid moral message against poaching at its core. This was a huge surprise to me as I wasn’t expecting much from Beast, but I was pleasantly surprised.
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