Have you ever wanted to see Idris Elba straight up punch a lion?
Well, now all your wishes have come true as Elba is about to unleash hell(-ba) on the eponymous animal in Baltasar Kormakur’s Beast.
Set in the heart of South Africa, recently widowed Doctor Nate takes his two daughters, Mer and Norah, to the country where their late mother was raised. There they meet old family friend and wildlife biologist Martin who takes them on a tour of the reservation he manages. However, due to a recent spate of poaching, a bloodthirsty lion is out for revenge, and is headed straight for the family. Can they survive this frenzied attack?
For those who wish to compare this film to films such as The Meg, where Jason Statham punches a prehistoric shark in the nose (this may not be true, I black out from adrenaline watching the film…) then be rest assured Beast offers the same high-octane tomfoolery. There’s a predator, it’s out for blood, and there is only one man who can save the day. There’s pretty impressive and bloody fight sequences as the lion pounces out of shadows in brilliant, energetic jump scares.
Kormakur’s most acclaimed and famous work is the mountain disaster movie Everest. Some of that man verse nature brilliance is found here. In lesser hands, the lion would appear constantly and always, but Kormakur infuses the action with still sequences. As the family are trapped in a car for a large chunk of the film, the movie is weighted with other dangers – wound infections, lack of supplies, and the hot South African heat.
However, Beast suffers from a really clunky script. The dialogue is mostly expositional, supplying us the plot device tools for how our characters are going to survive but alas, not with the tools for making us really care about them. It works somewhat when Elba and the ever brilliant Sharlto Copley work their scenes together. But young relative newcomers Leah Jeffries and Iyana Halley really struggle.
The serious tone sometimes is unmatched with the ridiculousness of the situation. Whilst there is a lot of fun to be had, and true there is a message here about how you should really respect the wild (Copley’s Martin never wavers from this, right until the end,) if the film accepted it’s silliness, it’ll be a lot more entertaining.
Idris Elba does carry the movie, ably. He truly is one beast of an actor.
