REVIEW: ‘Beasts of No Nation’ Is Poised To Make A Run At Oscar Gold

Beasts of No Nation came to the Toronto International Film Festival after a successful premiere in Venice, where it won an acting award for its young star, Abraham Attah. With last week’s Telluride and Toronto screenings, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s latest feature film made its North American debut and began to position itself for the upcoming awards season.

The film —which currently sits with a perfect 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes— certainly is potent enough to make a dent in the crush of fall offerings, not to mention being poised to make a run at Oscar gold. Idris Elba stars as a West African Commandant directing a battalion of child soldiers, including young Agu (Attah), who escaped a massacre of men from his village. The ensuing campaign sees the brutality of war put in the spotlight, with particular horror reserved for the actions undertaken by these small boys. They commit monstrous acts; does this make them monsters? Fukunaga takes seriously the balance of victims and victimizers under a horrendous state of war without end.

More than anything else, Beasts is reminiscent of Fukunaga’s debut feature, Sin Nombre. While he made a breakthrough into the American marketplace with his feature adaptation of Jane Eyre, then became even more highly acclaimed after the dazzling first season of True Detective, Fukunaga’s reputation as a young filmmaker to watch began with Sin Nombre, which took the directing award at Sundance in 2009 and was nominated for Best Feature and Best Director at the Independent Spirit Awards that year. The film follows a Mexican teenager and gang member who attempts to escape to America. As in Beasts, Fukunaga takes great care in balancing the horror of the actions committed by his central youth character with a deep empathy for the conditions that brought him there.

That Fukunaga’s first three projects represented such diversity — from a Central American character study to a misty costume drama to an elliptical cop drama — has been a huge reason why everybody’s so high on him as a major young talent. He’s not pigeon-holing himself in any one genre, and his talents continue to develop. But it’s also heartening to see that he can revisit old themes without feeling stale. You can — and should — stream Sin Nombre, and Beasts of No Nation will be released in theaters and on Netflix on October 16th.

Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.

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