‘Beast’ Film Review: Idris Elba’s Absentee Dad Battles an Angry, Hungry Lion
thewrap.comnot forget to loot those bodies. You’re going to need whatever’s in their pockets – just like you’re going to need to remember all the foreshadowing from Scene 24 – if you want to survive the lion attack.If a movie is going to work, it may as well work like clockwork.
It’s satisfying to see all the pieces come together in “Beast,” even though two of the very last pieces (a revelation about a previously established plot point, and its proximity to another, equally important plot point) don’t fit at all, leaving a gigantic hole in the otherwise tightly woven narrative.Elba is reliably tough and tender.
He’s the rare performer whose sensitivity and physical power really seem to fuel each other; a gruff, perpetual-emotion machine.
Halley and Jeffries are convincing as teenagers on an uncomfortable vacation with their previously absentee dad, but when they get impatient and decide to yell at him on a walkie-talkie – when they know damn well there’s a man-eating lion hunting him at that very moment – it feels less like something their characters would do and more like something a screenwriter would like them to do in order to goose the tension artificially.The MVP of “Beast” is veteran cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, who crafts the film out of extended, complicated takes that give it a remarkable visual clarity.
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