It’s been six long years since Idris Elba embarked on what we can only now call his “Bad Cat Trilogy.”
He was the Shere Khan’s villainous ruler of the jungle. “The Jungle Book,”And he violated every human law that Macavity incriminated. “Cats.” But this time it’s different: In Baltasar Kormákur’s “Beast,”Elba must battle an evil cat within his own human form. If it feels poetic, it might be. “Beast”Was anything more than a competent genre exercise.
Elba stars in Dr. Nate Samuels as a doctor who visits South Africa with Meredith (Iyana Haley), and his two daughters. “Licorice Pizza”) and Nora (Leah Jeffries, “Rel”). They’re visiting the home town of Meredith and Nora’s mother who, shortly after she separated from Nate, was diagnosed with – and swiftly died of – cancer.
That’s a lot of baggage for one trip, but Nate is trying to make up for lost time by bonding over this new adventure. Martin Battles, the wildlife reserve caretaker (Sharlto copley, always) Nate is reunited with his friend. “Chappie”In our hearts, they go into the wilderness to see lions but are quickly attacked by one.
That last bit wasn’t on their itinerary, but it was inevitable just the same. “Beast”The film opens with a brutal scene in which poachers kill a whole pride of wild lions. Only one male survives and reveals himself as John Wick’s cat version. The titular animal then kills all of the poachers that killed his family, and then proceeds to murder everyone else he meets.
It’s a blunt but efficient way to get “Beast”Where it should go. Screenwriter Ryan Engle (“Rampage”) works off a story by Jaime Primak Sullivan, and the two previously collaborated on the thriller “Breaking In,”The film starred Gabrielle Union playing a mother protecting her children against home invaders. Engle and Sullivan have a knack for brutal, simplistic narratives, and that’s “Beast”It’s all there.
Nate and his family find themselves trapped in a car with an enormous lion that is constantly moving around the car and ripping everything apart. “Beast”This film is all about problem-solving. They have established their characters and have introduced the tools they have at their disposal. All that remains is for events to transpire that bring the characters to the logical conclusion of their uncomplicated arcs – so long as they can figure out how to solve puzzles straight out of an old LucasArts point-and-click adventure game.
Hang on to that lighter; it’ll be important later. Radios aren’t just radios; they can also be used as decoys. Don’t forget to do the following: NotYou shouldn’t take their bodies. You’re going to need whatever’s in their pockets – just like you’re going to need to remember all the foreshadowing from Scene 24 – if you want to survive the lion attack.
It’s important that a movie works if it is to succeed. It’s satisfying to see all the pieces come together in “Beast,” even though two of the very last pieces (a revelation about a previously established plot point, and its proximity to another, equally important plot point) don’t fit at all, leaving a gigantic hole in the otherwise tightly woven narrative.
Elba is a solid, tough, and gentle man. He’s the rare performer whose sensitivity and physical power really seem to fuel each other; a gruff, perpetual-emotion machine. Halley and Jeffries are convincing as teenagers on an uncomfortable vacation with their previously absentee dad, but when they get impatient and decide to yell at him on a walkie-talkie – when they know damn well there’s a man-eating lion hunting him at that very moment – it feels less like something their characters would do and more like something a screenwriter would like them to do in order to goose the tension artificially.
The MVP of “Beast”Philippe Rousselot is a veteran cinematographer who creates the film from long, complex takes that give it an extraordinary visual clarity. Director Kormákur (“Everest”These situations cannot be made convincing by rapid-fire editing. The scares can’t come from nowhere. This film makes the viewer hyper-aware about the dangers around them, and they search every frame looking for signs that a hungry, pissed-off lion is in it.
It’s a thrilling, entertaining watch because of its visual complexity and simplicity in storytelling. But something’s off: “Beast” raises provocative questions about the ethics of poaching and the primal significance of the family unit, but rather than attempting to answer those questions, the picture falls back on hackneyed dad-film clichés in which the evils of the world serve only as an excuse to test a father’s machismo. It’s yet another film that tries, with middling success, to make the case that all of an absentee dad’s flaws can be forgiven if he steps up on the one and only day that asks him to be manly as hell.
Elba’s mournful performance and gentle charms make those reductive tropes go over better than they might have otherwise, and Kormákur’s confident filmmaking, bolstered by Rousselot’s exciting camerawork, smooth over most of the other creases. “Beast”It is a gripping survival thriller, expertly crafted and engagingly executed. While there are worse ways to spend 93 mins in a movie theatre, audiences who long for something more than just entertainment may feel hungry.
“Beast”In US theatres August 19.