Beast movie review: Idris Elba roars with all his might as a complex survivalist

3.5/5

STORY: An emotionally checked-out widower, Dr Nate Samuels (Idris Elba), figured he can no longer walk around with a broken heart, and so he books a safari trip back in his South African native, hoping his pre-teen daughters would finally see the good in him. Of course, Beast wouldn't exist without a beast going rogue. Through long shots and short dialogues, this survival drama tells you that in a wrestling match between man versus wild, there's never a clear-cut hero. 

REVIEW: Have we ever seen an otherwise proud and pompous animal, such as the mighty lion—who has lost his pride—exhibit complex, at times conflicting, emotions in a cinematic capacity? The short answer is no. 

Let's get this nagging thought out of the way first—Idris Elba is hot and brooding in a 'sexiest man alive' kind of way; and when he is not fighting the vengeful lion that's out to exact his revenge, Elba is aloof and introspective, thus making Beast all the more enticing to the eyes. In Dr Nate Samuels, something seems innately broken as he dream-walks through dark allies only to find a dead wife he couldn't save. The emotional arc, or the lack of it in him, placed at the centre of this chaotically beautiful thriller is what sets Beast apart from other animal-attack storylines. Through Samuels, Elba fights two fights: one with the beast, and the other with the beast within. 

Baltasar Kormákur's jungle-safary-gone-epically-wrong survival drama plants his four characters, along with us the audience, in the middle of an extreme situation that neither the culprit nor the victim is entirely sure how to navigate. Perhaps as a sick joke, Kormákur leaves it on us to distinguish between the two. The larger question hovering over its visually exciting and aesthetically rich narrative is: when the jungle rules are broken, are the animals susceptible to danger, too?

In Beast, the humans are, to absolutely nobody's surprise, not these morally upstanding superior beings with a higher emotional intelligence, thereby making it raw and real. A pack of poachers hunt the pride of a sturdy lion, his pain so severe that he he vows to be avenged and seeks justice... not just against the wrongdoers, but humanity in general. Survival, in Kormákur's universe, is a level playing field then. Pick a side if you will, but the loyalties are bound to shift.

Beast is a roaring reminder of the hushed reality of human behaviour—that it is all about the greed, and it stops at nothing. 

VERDICT: Every once in a while, we get to witness human vulnerability on screen with an honesty that's rare these days. Idris Elba's Beast is one of them: complex yet kind, raw yet roaring. Go... watch!