Beasts of No Nation review

Netflix has forever changed the traditional models of content delivery. Video stores were put on the endangered species list when people began subscribing to the company’s mail-based DVD rental system, and were later forced into extinction by its ever-expanding streaming service. Entire seasons of television shows, old and new, could be accessed with a single click and movies that people may have never considered watching were put on the same digital shelf as familiar classics. It wouldn’t be long before Netflix would start creating its own content, first in the form of serialized dramas like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black,” and now in the form of stand-alone movies.

Netflix’s first original film “Beasts of No Nation” is an attempt to draw in a new audience that may not already be sold on the service’s versatility. In order to be eligible for awards consideration, this movie was given a day-and-date release, where it was available to stream from home alongside a limited theatrical run. This African war-thriller was written, directed and shot by Cary Fukunaga, director of the first season of HBO’s popular crime series “True Detective,” and the seductive style and the rich atmosphere that drew people into that show is certainly evident in this project as well.

The story here follows the life of a young villager named Agu (Abraham Attah) who is left an orphan when his family is gunned down in the streets by an invading government army. Agu manages to survive the vicious attack when he escapes into the bush. After a few days of struggling on his own, he is ambushed by a group of militant rebels who promise to give him food, water and safety if he joins their cause. Even more enticing, the young survivor is given a chance to avenge his family’s murder with the opportunity to train as a child soldier.

The group’s charismatic Commandant is played by English actor Idris Elba, who portrays the ragtag war-lord with a weighty sense of pathos and psychosis that makes it uncomfortably difficult to label him a monster, even as he indoctrinates eleven year olds into slaying grown men with machetes and keeps them enslaved to his agenda through heroin addiction. Elba plays this tyrannical Pied Piper with a world of pain behind his tired eyes and an unrelenting cycle of aggression expressed through the delivery of his radical speeches.

Attah is also given a strong arc as an actor, mentally aged far beyond his years as he is forced to endure and internalize the worst of human instincts. His character quickly loses his innocence while marching through the jungle with the other brainwashed lost boys and slowly loses his humanity as they pass from one massacre to another.

Fukunaga evokes Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” by giving us the same long, dead stare into the abyss, and in many ways “Beasts of No Nation” is a similar triumph of stylish and emotional filmmaking. It’s very well acted, it’s directed with confidence and conviction and the oppressive tone of the film lingers hours after the credits roll. Much of it is very well made and the power of individual scenes are undeniable, but the movie ultimately seems more concerned with mood than it does theme—of course the very same could be said of “Apocalypse Now."

Not unlike a perverse take on “Oliver Twist,” the fable-like nature of the film’s structure gives the movie something stylistically tangible to hold on to as it throws its audience into psychologically difficult terrain. Though sometimes this technique registers as pat or sensational when juxtaposed with the movie’s all-too-serious subject matter.

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks a film like this, although documenting a very different culture, helps viewers understand the process of radicalization by humanizing those we may so easily label monsters and villains. The difficult truth is that in unstable governments it is often previous victims who become the most dangerous victimizers.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2015