Beasts of No Nation

Its going to be hard to be funny and irreverent about this film as its about African civil war, child soldiers, rape and murder. I am obviously a comedy genius, but I think I will struggle to make that shit funny, so maybe I'll just review it and you can laugh at my attempts to be serious, deal? OK!

I'll get the plot out of the way first. In an unnamed African country a war begins in which government troops fight with guerrilla forces set up by locals who hope to stop them enforcing the will of an unnamed military junta on countries many small villages. Much like in real life, this leads to the recruitment of a number of child soldiers, who are turned into killing machines from a young age.

Beasts of No Nation is a film that achieved considerable attention in 2015/16 for a multitude of reasons. One of which is that critics were pretty universally positive about the film, it currently has a score of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes and there has been particular praise for the performances of the actors. Idris Elba has drawn a lot of attention because of his performance as the character simply known as Commandant. Now, a lot of the attention recently has been because he did not receive an Oscar nomination for the role, and this has then been tied in with the argument that the Oscars are universally biased towards white people. Now I wont get into that debate, but I will say that I don't think his performance really warrants a nomination. Nothing to do with him being black, but I just think as far as performances go, the awards should go to Abraham Attah who plays the films lead Agu. This kid is seriously good in this movie in which he plays a child soldier whose life is turned on its head when he is forced to separate from his mother, only to see his father and older brother killed by government forces. Attah completely stole the show for me and gave an utterly captivating and chilling performance of a child forced into actions that no child should have to undertake.
Unfortunately in all the arguments about race (rightfully so) people have seemingly missed a really wonderful performance from a teenager in what must have been an intensely difficult role and that's quite sad.

Nevertheless, that's one of the best things about Beast of No Nation, the performances. It is known that writer/director Cary Joji Fukunaga used real victims and ex soldiers of war in his cast and it shows, at points you do get lost in the performances and you really feel like you are in a war zone where anybody could die at any moment. This is the films biggest strength as I feel it covers up pretty well its most obvious flaws.

Yes, despite its glowing reviews, there are some flaws.

I am loathe to criticise a story that highlights a serious subject, but I just felt that the storyline was a bit slow and thin, despite plenty happening. Though that might sound like a contradiction I just mean that although plenty happens to the characters, its just the same thing over and over again. They move from one area to the next, you think they are going to improve their lives and end the war they are fighting, but the Commandant ruins this. This is at points gripping and at other points boring, there is a slight lack of balance of what the characters are doing and it lets the film down slightly.

As for the other glaring flaw and I cant believe I have to keep saying this, its too long! At 137 minutes long Beasts of No Nation simply does not have enough to warrant such a bloated running time. This could have easily been much shorter and I think with that the repetition of scenes problem would have been eradicated. Directors and studios really need to realise that if a film is going to be 2 hours or over it better have a bloody good reason to do it, this unfortunately didn't have that reason.

Despite the attention and ratings the film has received recently, I don't think it will stand the test of time with regards to movies made about subject of child soldiers and African civil war. I haven't seen hundreds of movies with that as a theme, but I would personally recommend films such as Johnny Mad Dog and Blood Diamond over Beasts of No Nation.

It is by no means a terrible film, and its worth a watch just for the performance of Abraham Attah, but it didn't live up the the expectations I had before I watched it. Obviously I am just one man and I am sure there are many out there who would totally disagree with me, but that's what movie reviewing is all about folks, please put away the pitch forks, I have told you about that before.

Sayonora


Bonus fact: I am listening to J Pop/Metal crossover music as I write this, weird right?