Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Beast’ on Prime Video, a Lion-on-a-Rampage Thriller in Which Idris Elba Goes Man-vs.-Wild

From the same spiritual place as Liam-Neeson-fights-wolves-with-his-damn-bare-hands movie The Grey comes Idris-Elba-fights-a-lion-with-his-damn-bare-hands movie Beast, now on VOD services like Prime Video. Director Baltasar Kormakur (Adrift, Everest) sits behind the camera without a lick of pretense that he’s making anything more than a low-concept movie with a monosyllabic title headlined by an actor with considerable screen presence. When I say it’s pretty good for what it is, I ain’t (pause for dramatic effect) lion.

BEAST: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: THE AFRICAN SAVANNAH: Some shitty shitty poachers baited a lion pride with a dead zebra, and now they fire away, killing some of the most beautiful and majestic creatures ever to walk the earth. But a bunch of them get their just desserts when they wound a big-maned male, who retaliates as only a gigantic lion can – and no, he doesn’t TP their houses or steal their identities and charge up a bunch of expensive athleisure wear on their credit cards. He does shit with his TEETH and CLAWS and it all HURTS. He’s mad as hell and he ain’t gonna etc. etc. etc.

Now, this lion, who really needs a name, so let’s just call him Charles, is he going to see all humans as his enemy and exact his revenge on anything with two legs? Not so fast! You always complain about movies like this for not having much character development, so let’s DEVELOP some damn CHARACTERS, why don’t we. Nate Samuels (Elba) is a recent widower, father to the teenage Meredith (Iyana Halley) and tweener Norah (Leah Jeffries). Their late wife/mother is from this stretch of Africa they’re visiting now, staying with Nate’s old friend Martin (Sharlto Copley), a conservationist who fights poachers. Meredith is still angry with her father. He and her mother split up just before she got sick. She blames him for destroying the family; he counters that they mutually agreed on a trial separation and he didn’t know she was ill. Norah is stuck in the middle. Everyone is pained and grieving.

Now, it’s obvious that the only thing that can heal this conflict is some type of familial bonding experience, specifically a highly traumatic one involving a large wounded carnivore on a rampage. Martin takes them on a private safari and they see giraffes, wildebeest, elephants and lions, but these lions are friendly and cuddly ones who hug Martin because he raised them as cubs – not that anyone else should get too close, mind you. But this is not a cuddly-wuddly land. It’s a savage land. They come across the aftermath of a massacre. Dead people everywhere. Mauled. Slashed. Charles is angry. Killing just to kill. “Cats don’t do this, you know!” Martin exclaims, and oh, sorry, he’s totally wrong there. And before you know it, Martin, Nate, Meredith and Norah are trying very very very very very very very very hard not to get killed.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Beast is heavily indebted to Cujo, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Crawl, The Revenant, possibly The Lion King and maybe even Cats, except this time, Idris Elba is not one of the cats.

Performance Worth Watching: Elba. Damn bare hands. You almost want to buy the premise based on the charisma he carries with him to every movie he’s in. Almost.

Memorable Dialogue: Martin’s wise words of painfully obvious wisdom, to Nate: “This is not a fight you are designed to win.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Modest ambitions, modestly met. Beast promises a fight between Idris Elba and a pissed-off lion, and that’s what it gives us. Sure, it throws in the aggrieved-family stuff so we can nurture more than standard-survival empathy for people who are in danger of being murdered by lions, but the movie is not about that. The movie is not titled Aggrieved Family. It is titled Beast. And it gives us a beast. No need to contact the Truth In Advertising Dept. or Donald Trump’s lawyer.

Perhaps it goes without saying that this movie, like many other animals-attack adventures before it, will eventually defy some basic tenets of logic, reason and even nature itself. That’s to be expected, so let’s set aside our criticisms of such things and recognize that this movie is pretty much designed to manipulate, and to be interactive, all but prodding us with broomsticks to yell advice at the screen. You know, GET AWAY FROM THE BROKEN WINDOW and IT’S NOT DEAD YET, things like that. It’s engaging, and notably not boring.

So, accepting the absence of thematic content and realistic portrayals of the natural world – the latter component implying acceptance of fairly convincing CGI angry lions – such films inevitably must be somewhat about themselves and how they were made. And Beast is made with a degree of elegance that’s wholly unexpected: Lengthy steadicam shots that not only show commitment to the filmmaking craft from Kormakur, but also work nicely to build and sustain suspense. Some careful thought and planning went into this ridiculous movie in which Idris Elba runs out of tranquilizer darts and bullets and loses his knife and does what he must with his fists in order to protect what’s left of his sad family. Don’t forget, his character is something of a wounded animal, too.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Beast is an entertaining, tense and stylish 90 minutes. You could do far worse than to watch Elba big-time-wrestle a big cat.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.