Review of Beasts of No Nation (2015) by Ydnar4 — 19 Oct 2015

Beasts of No Nation really captures its setting well. You really feel like you are in a war torn nation when you watch this movie, but I found that movie could’ve benefitted for being more raw. I felt like at times like I was watching a tv movie because I was expecting a movie about child soldiers to be difficult to watch and it really is not. I thought that maybe Netflix really didn’t want to get their hands dirty with their first film. There were a handful of scenes that had some good intensity but in the end I really wasn’t impressed like I had hoped.

I found that they also spent too much time focusing on Idris Elba’s character rather than the young boy. I do really feel that Elba is a great actor and his performance here is great and he deserves all the attention he gets for this film but I found that he took up too much of the content and because of that I cared less about the young boy in this movie. Elba’s character is really not even that evil and I didn’t hate him at all which is probably what I was supposed to do.

Beasts of No Nation is not a terrible film and the critics seem to be enjoying it a lot but I just found it to be a disappointment. I am interested the see the future of original Netflix material but the kick off wasn’t as good as I expected.