Beast
Idris Elba provides both charisma and humanity in a taut thriller that is gorgeous to look at and is genuinely suspenseful.
Claws for thought: Idris Elba
The last time Idris Elba shot a film in Africa, he was the beast. In Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, he played the brutal leader of an army of child soldiers in an unnamed West African country. For his performance, he received both a Bafta and a Golden Globe nomination. Now, in a break from his two-dimensional essays for D.C. and Marvel (as, respectively, Bloodsport and the Norse deity Heimdall), he’s back as a human being in a role that gives him centre stage. Beast is still generic stuff (the prologue should be jettisoned), but Elba provides a charismatic human presence.
Nate Samuels needs some emotional rehabilitation with his two young daughters. Following the break-up of his marriage and the subsequent death of his estranged wife, Nate takes Meya (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Jeffries) to the rural African birthplace of their mother. With a soupçon of exposition, we learn that Nate has some major bridges to rebuild with his teenage daughter Meya (who, like her mother, is a talented photographer). He is a doctor – which turns out to be handy – but is by no means a renaissance superman (he can’t even hot-wire a car, for Heaven’s sake). But Nate oozes common sense and is full of love, for his daughters, for their mother and for Africa.
Once in the Mopani Game Reserve in South Africa, Nate is reunited with his old buddy Martin (Sharlto Copley), who happily puts them all up. But for the New York teenagers, the savanna proves a mixed blessing, the excitement of the bush and the exotic wildlife mitigated by the oppressive heat and the lack of Wi-Fi and a mobile signal. Then, on their first day, a field trip turns ugly when they discover the inhabitants of a nearby village are all dead. Not long afterwards, they find themselves stalked by a lion that seems bent on murder…
In contrast to most multiplex thrillers of late, which seem to be largely set in underlit interiors, the Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavík, The Deep, Everest) makes the most of the wide-open spaces of Limpopo and Northern Cape, aided by the accomplished camerawork of his DP Philippe Rousselot. Inevitably recalling the pressure cooker thrills of Jaws (this ain’t Born Free or The Lion King), the film’s digitally generated beast is a more convincing antagonist than Spielberg’s shark. And unlike the latter, this predator has good reason for his vendetta, as his pride was wiped out by poachers. Thus, Beast works on a number of levels, providing characters that we are emotionally invested in, while serving up the jump scares and intensity with a sure hand. As an audience-grabbing thrill fest, the film really does deliver.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Idris Elba, Sharlto Copley, Iyana Halley, Leah Jeffries, Tafara Nyatsanza.
Dir Baltasar Kormákur, Pro James Lopez, Will Packer and Jaime Primak Sullivan, Screenplay Ryan Engle, from a story by Jaime Primak Sullivan, Ph Philippe Rousselot, Pro Des Jean-Vincent Puzos, Ed Jay Rabinowitz, Music Steven Price, Costumes Moira Anne Meyer, Sound Glenn Freemantle, Danny Freemantle and Nick Freemantle, Dialect coach Susan Hegarty.
Will Packer Productions/RVK Studios-Universal Pictures.92 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 19 August 2022. UK Rel: 26 August 2022. Cert. 15.
