Review of Beasts of No Nation (2015) by Jeff B — 22 Oct 2016

Building a near-Perfect Beast, screenwriter-director Cary Joji Fukunaga charts a harrowing war-is-Hell portrait of a boy that feels blisteringly real even though it's set in a fictional African Nation. Sporting no flies in its barbed mouth, this heavy drama pulls no brass-knuckle punches. Even though this coming-of-age occasionally tends to weigh filmgoers down to near-dismal depths (purposely, mind you, but it takes a toll regardless), a note of hope nonetheless rings through the funeral dirge.

In this R-rated drama adapted from the novel by Uzodinma Iweala, a child soldier (Attah) fights in the civil war of an unnamed African country and falls under the watchful eye of a sadistic commandant (Elba).

In this, the first film released on a wide scale by a streaming service and not exclusively in theaters, Netflix makes a great case for the future of distribution. As unflinching as Fukunaga's adaptation and direction (it helps that he helmed the GOOD season of HBO's Hard-R crime saga True Detective), Attah and Elba's award-worthy performances ground the action all the more.

Bottom line: Bout of Africa.