DIRECTOR: Baltasar Kormákur
CAST: Idris Elba, Iyana Halley, Leah Sava Jeffries, Sharlto Copley
RUNNING TIME: 93 mins
CERTIFICATE: 15
BASICALLY…: Whilst touring the African plains, a father (Elba) tries to protect his family from a ravenous lion…
NOW FOR THE REVIEW…
To answer your most burning question right away: yes, Beast is the film in which Idris Elba punches a CG lion right in the face, and it is just as glorious to watch as it is to describe. However, the film – directed by Baltasar Kormákur, from a screenplay by Ryan Engle – has quite a bit more to offer than just that, in that you could legitimately describe it as a hybrid between Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity and the live-action remake of The Lion King, and somehow it’s far more impressive (especially from a filmmaking angle) than that joint comparison perhaps makes it sound.
Elba stars as Dr. Nate Samuels, a recently widowed practitioner who we learn wasn’t particularly close with his dying wife, nor their young daughters Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries). In an attempt to fix his broken bond with his kids, Nate takes them on a safari trip to a wildlife reserve in South Africa, where his old friend Martin (Sharlto Copley) has offered to drive them around and show them all the animals roaming about the plains. However, their trip is cut short when a ferocious lion – which is understandably pissed after its pride is mercilessly gunned down by illegal poachers – begins attacking and killing all humans it comes across, forcing Nate and his daughters to survive the night in a broken-down jeep with minimal radio frequency and, of course, a giant and dangerous predator lurking within the shadows at nearly all times.
Like Gravity, it’s an extremely simple survival story where the tension comes from how genuinely frightening the situation is, with characters at a nanosecond’s notice being completely mauled by this ferocious beast of a lion (hence the title), suffering wounds or worse that are pretty gnarly for anyone to experience. However, also like Cuarón’s Oscar-winning hit, Beast is a rather fascinating technical achievement, particularly with how ambitious its cinematography is. Many of the shots are done (or at the very least are edited to appear as though they’re done) in long, uninterrupted single takes that bring the audience along on a journey through numerous African landscapes, in and out of cars and buildings, and even through some surreal dream sequences as the main plot unfolds. Watching it, you’re constantly wondering how they managed to get certain angles, which by most accounts should be impossible to pull off or seamlessly stitch together, and is surely the sign of incredibly sufficient filmmaking on Kormákur’s part, as well as that of cinematographer Philippe Rousselot who has been tasked with assembling these impressive shots while also making it a rather tense and chilling film to look at.
The one-shot nature of the cinematography also allows for a lot of naturalism in these performances, which at times feel surprisingly real for the kind of B-movie plot that it carries. You’ll have actors like Idris Elba and Sharlto Copley (both great in this movie) whose characters, during moments of panic and despair, will overlap on their dialogue as they attempt to piece together the situation, and rarely will it feel like they’re just reciting from a script. Perhaps that is more to do with how both are extremely talented performers than how the story and dialogue is written, but the fact that it feels as authentic and of the moment as it does mean that there is, at the very least, an incredibly competent director at the helm who can get these naturalistic performances out of these actors. There are also moments where they have to act opposite CGI lions, and even that is very well executed because not only is the filmmaking once again so tightknit on detail and precision, but also due to the fact that the effects in this movie are rather excellent. Although you can always tell that they’re computer-generated, they look real enough to at least pose a threat or, during an earlier encounter with a friendlier pack of lions, be extremely cuddly to be around. One thing you have to give the recent Lion King remake is that the photo-realistic effects in that movie look spectacular, and Beast shares that trait with the much-derided blockbuster in that you do believe (to a point) that there are actual lions on the screen, ready to just get sucker-punched by Elba in the highly intense climax.
It is such a well-made and entertaining movie that you do end up forgiving it for some of the lesser, more conventional moments (characters will inevitably do very stupid things just to make the plot longer, and as fantastic as the lion effects in this movie are, there are some very questionable fire graphics during one pivotal sequence). There’s such a wholesome simplicity to this rather tense thriller that’s hard to ignore, like it’s an old-fashioned blockbuster that largely free of pretension and just has as much fun with its straightforward narrative and filmmaking style as it can. All of that, by the way, from a film where the main selling point is Idris Elba punching a lion in the face (which he does, to everlasting delight).
SO, TO SUM UP…
Beast is a superbly made and highly entertaining survival thriller that boasts some excellent cinematography, impressive visual effects, and some admirably naturalistic performances from the likes of Idris Elba and Sharlto Copley, all of which are enough to forgive some of its sillier B-movie qualities as well as an extremely simple plot.
