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‘beast’ review: idris elba tangles with the king of the jungle in tense but silly survival thriller.
Sharlto Copley also stars in Baltasar Kormákur's nightmare safari in which a desperate father is driven to protect his daughters from a vengeful lion.
By David Rooney
David Rooney
Chief Film Critic
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Beast wants to have it both ways. Ryan Engle’s script, from a story by Jaime Primak Sullivan, loads up on gore and distressingly close calls amped up with effective jump scares. But it’s not content to give us dumb hair-raising fun; it also aims to move us with the tender feelings and frictions of a family ruptured by tragedy. What’s more, it asks us to accept a citified guy who appears never before to have handled a rifle instantly becoming Indiana Jones.
It’s a testament to the charisma and natural gravitas of Elba that we even halfway buy Dr. Nate Samuels as he dodges the massive rogue male lion, at one point simultaneously stopping a deadly boomslang snake mid-strike. When he’s wading around in crocodile-infested waters, I kept expecting him to punch one of those leathery mothers in the mouth, Lara Croft-style.
A tense prologue shows poachers under the cloak of night wrapping up a successful hunt, during which they have killed a pride of lions, whose teeth, claws and bones fetch big money on the black market. Only the patriarch of the pride eludes them, its paw prints indicating its mighty size. A handful of men stay behind to kill the creature before it comes after them. But its stealth in the tall grass proves too much for them.
Kormákur follows the old rule of holding off on showing the monster, seen only in the briefest flash as it leaps out of the darkness onto an unfortunate poacher.
Recently widowed Dr. Nate arrives with his 18-year-old daughter Mere (Iyana Halley) and her 13-year-old sister Norah (Leah Jeffries) at a remote location deep in the South African bushland, met there by family friend Martin ( Sharlto Copley ), a wildlife expert who manages the nature reserve.
Nate first met his wife there through Martin, and the trip to some degree has been planned to bridge the distance that’s opened up between him and Mere since her mother’s death. The couple had mutually agreed to separate, and Mere blames her dad for not being there as her mother’s health declined. In routine fashion, Nate also beats himself up for not being a sharp enough doctor to spot the cancer and stop it in its tracks.
But when Martin spots what appears to be a bullet wound in the paw of one of the females, he insists they stop by a local village to investigate. The fresh carnage they find there is alarming evidence of a lion behaving abnormally, entering a populated settlement and indiscriminately killing without eating its prey. A mountain in their path blocks the jeep’s radio signal, leaving the group with minimal protection when the grieving lion charges at them.
Unlike, say, Disney’s unnecessary live-action remake of The Lion King , which just seemed like another form of animation, minus the heart, the CG lion here is a fearsome, photo-realistic creature. The relentlessness with which it pounds the jeep, crashing through windows and swiping at the trembling family inside, makes for some pulse-pounding sequences.
Halley and Jeffries are terrific as young women suddenly given something more legitimate to complain about than the lack of WiFi or cell reception. And the script gives them just enough courage and resourcefulness to have a hand in the family’s survival, without veering into ridiculousness. That’s not always the case with Nate, who is forced to take charge when Martin is immobilized by a severe mauling. Suspension of disbelief is required more than once, notably when the lion is only inches away from Nate but appears to have no sense of smell. Maybe its nose got damaged while pulverizing the jeep’s windscreen?
As man vs. beast stories go, this one is neither the best nor the worst. Steven Price’s score keeps the tension high, and Elba and Copley are good enough actors to deliver even the most pedestrian dialogue with conviction. It also helps that the movie runs a tight 90 minutes. Beast is no Jaws , but it’s no Jaws: The Revenge , either.
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‘Beast’ Review: Idris Elba Shows a Berserk African Lion Who’s Boss
It's not as ambitious as 'Nope,' but this tense survival story — set amid an out-of-control safari — is a lot more fun than brainier summer blockbusters.
By Peter Debruge
Peter Debruge
Chief Film Critic
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No animals were harmed in the making of “ Beast .” Frankly, it doesn’t look like any animals were even used in the making of “Beast,” but if you can get past the idea that the two-ton lion threatening Idris Elba and his family in the movie is a singularly frightening combination of ones and zeros, not killer instinct and claws, then “Beast” is a blast.
A white-knuckle “When Animals Attack!” movie in the tradition of “Jaws” and “Anaconda,” this big-budget, big-screen release features A-list actors — OK, actor , singular — and a director who knows what he’s doing: Icelandic ace Baltasar Kormákur, who cut his teeth on such nightmare-inducing man-against-nature films as “Everest” and “Adrift.” Here, the threat is a very big, very angry African cat, understandably agitated after a group of poachers slaughtered his pride, that has decided to kill every human that crosses his path. Seriously, the body count in this movie is off the charts.
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Enter Elba, who plays single dad Nate Samuels, a tough but emotionally wounded man looking to reconnect with his two daughters, Mere (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Jeffries), by bringing them to the African savanna where he met their mother. He imagines the trip as a bonding experience and perhaps a way to patch things up after a tough year. Screenwriter Ryan Engle’s otherwise lean, suspense-focused script spends a lot of energy on their backstory, fleshing out problems with the parents’ marriage, Mom’s death by cancer and how the girls are coping with that tragedy. Dad’s in the doghouse, but punching a killer lion in the kisser is a decent way to show how much he loves his girls.
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Not all lions are ferocious, Kormákur wants to make clear, including a scene where their host, Martin (South African actor Sharlto Copley, star of “District 9”), shows how the cuddly carnivores behave toward humans they trust. Martin raised an entire pride of lions on his property from cubs, and when he approaches their territory, instead of ripping him limb from limb, the two adult males rush out to greet him, putting their (CG) paws on his shoulders and licking his face. It’s like the VFX equivalent of the “Christian the Lion” viral videos you’ve probably seen online, except, because the cats aren’t real, the scene doesn’t feel as remarkable.
It’s definitely for the best that Kormákur didn’t insist on using actual lions. If you don’t know the true story of the film “Roar” and its wildly irresponsible production, give it a Google: Director Noel Marshall tried training his big-cat cast from birth, keeping lions and such around the house for years. When it came time to shoot, he endangered his own family, as wife (and “The Birds” star) Tippi Hedren and daughter Melanie Griffith were both mauled in the making of the film.
Here, Martin takes Nate and his daughters out for a mini-safari, not realizing there’s a rogue lion on the loose. The first couple of attacks happen off-camera, as Kormákur shows the victim’s face just before a loud Dolby snarl makes the megaplex walls vibrate. Cut to black. He saves the big reveal for Nate and his daughters, who’ve exposed themselves by stepping out of the (limited) safety of Martin’s reinforced SUV. Their behavior may be risky as hell, but half the fun of the movie comes from wanting to shout at these characters to get back in the bloody car.
The movie would be pretty boring if they just huddled up there waiting for help to arrive. Instead, Kormákur commits to the R rating, piling one threat on top of another. Turns out, Martin’s an “anti-poacher” (he shoots the guys who shoot the animals on his preserve), which makes things pretty tense when the poachers from the opening scene show up, armed to the teeth — like the guerrillas from Elba’s other African-beast movie, “Beasts of No Nation.” In theory, this would mean that Martin and the lion are on the same side, although there’s no reasoning with a carnivore that feels so threatened, it will proactively attack with no intention of eating its prey.
Don’t be surprised to find a decent segment of the audience rooting for the lion — not against the Samuels clan, but against the movie’s other, more villainous characters. If a human being had suffered the same indignity this lion does in the opening scene, having its entire family slaughtered by men with guns, we’d be cheering for him to get his revenge. But Kormákur never really adopts the animal’s POV, so we’re not invited to empathize with it so much as recognize that this atypical aggression has been provoked by the poachers.
That’s where he’s lucky to have Elba, who plainly insisted on playing someone with a complicated psychology, even if all the script required was a man tough enough to take the climactic mauling “Beast” has in store for Nate. Like the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, Elba is an incredibly physical performer who instinctively comes up with little bits of business to reveal the personality of his character. The ending is ludicrous, and yet it works because of all that Elba has invested in making this protective papa convincing. That’s the beauty of “Beast”: The lion may look fake, but the stakes feel real.
Reviewed at Burbank 16, Los Angeles, Aug. 16, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 93 MIN.
- Production: A Universal Pictures release and presentation of a Will Packer Prods., RVK Studios production. Producers: Will Packer, Baltasar Kormákur, James Lopez. Executive producers: Bernard Bellew, Jaime Primak Sullivan.
- Crew: Director: Baltasar Kormákur. Screenplay: Ryan Engle; story: Jaime Primak Sullivan. Camera: Philippe Rousselot. Editor: Jay Rabinowitz. Editor: Steven Price.
- With: Idris Elba, Sharlto Copley, Iyana Halley, Leah Jeffries.
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