Movie Reaction: Beast

Formula: Prey – the Predator

 

Some movies dictate the rules more than others. Eternal Sunshine leaves things up to the audience. I can watch it a number of different ways: hopeful, romantic, sad. Similarly, I don’t think two people have ever fully agreed on Mulholland Drive. I’ll often hear about how when someone makes art, they send it out into the world and relinquish ownership. It’s then up to the audience to make of it what they will. But then there are movies like Beast. There isn’t much ambiguity to that movie. You may like it or hate it, but that’s entirely based on how much you want to receive the specific thing it is offering. Beast promises Idris Elba kicking a lion in the face and it delivers.

 

There is a plot to the movie, because movies are supposed to have plots. Idris Elba is a father of two daughters. He takes them on a safari to the part of South Africa their recently passed mother was from. They are led by Sharlto Copley, who is a wildlife biologist and old friend of Elba’s. On the safari, they are attacked by a lion that has decided to start killing humans after poachers killed the rest of his pride. Even the movie repeatedly points out that it makes no sense for a lion to do this. But it’s happening. Deal with it. In other words, the movie is required to have a plot, but it doesn’t work too hard at it.

 

Beast is a lean 93 minutes that uses assorted wild locations for the action. The CGI lion looks pretty good. It’s not always picture perfect, but it’s not distractingly fake either. The small cast are as good as their ages would suggest. Elba and Copley fit in perfectly. Copley even gets to use something close to his real accent. The actresses playing the daughters (Iyana Halley and Leah Sava Jeffries) are weaker. Jeffries in particular as the younger sister can’t always sell her terror. She was, like, 11 when she shot the movie. I can forgive that.

 

It remains weird to me that Elba has never had a film to match his fame. He’s been in a ton of big movies but almost always in a supporting or ensemble role. Are you telling me that in the 2 decades since The Wire, whoever keeps making the Mark Wahlberg and Denzel movies couldn’t finds a couple more scripts to send Elba’s way*? He’s still only 50, so maybe a Liam Nesson run is coming. It’s weird to me though that if someone doesn’t recognize his name, I still can’t point to a marquee role with certainty that they’ll know. Beast is the first of this kind of leading action role in a while for him. He’s equipped for it. He plays a handsome doctor who is built like an action star. I think only the “doctor” part was in the screenplay. Elba brought the rest.

 

*Fun Fact: I said this before realizing the Beast director also directed Contraband (with Wahlberg) and Two Guns (with Wahlberg and Denzel).

 

There’s nothing mind-blowing about the movie. It’s a silly action movie with reasonably good execution on a moderate budget. It delivers what it promises, so I was pleased.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend