Forget the Left’s infatuation with “Palestinians.” Never mind the diminution of universal values or the uptick in tribal strife. The real consequence of postcolonial theory has been the death of the “white man in Africa” movie, iterations of which have thrilled cinemagoers ever since Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn floated the Nile in 1951’s The African Queen. Blood Diamond (2006), the last such picture to capture the public’s imagination, languished in development hell for years and was made only because Leonardo DiCaprio signed on at the peak of his influence. (Googling “Blood Diamond” and “white savior” reveals what studio heads are up against.) Out of Africa (1985), in which Meryl Streep plays the passionate owner of a coffee plantation, is basically unthinkable in 2022.
Though audiences are not exactly picketing the studios for a re-release of The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), the Kenya-set spine-chiller in which Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas hunt a pair of man-eaters, it is nevertheless dispiriting to think that such a film could never again be made. Happily, Universal Pictures and screenwriter Ryan Engle have hit upon a solution. If the likes of Douglas and Kilmer are no longer welcome on the dark continent, perhaps Idris Elba (The Wire, Luther) is up to the task.
The resulting movie, the unimaginatively named Beast, stars Elba as Nate Samuels, an American physician whose safari is interrupted by a colossal, startlingly aggressive lion. Like many a B-thriller before it, Beast contains just enough backstory to lend moral coherence to its action sequences. Thus, we learn that Nate’s wife (Naledi Mogadime) has recently died of cancer, leaving him to raise two teenagers. Also shown: the eye-rolling resentment of daughters Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries), an attitude that promises to complicate the family’s already harrowing trip into the bush.
Rounding out the cast is Sharlto Copley (District 9) as Martin Battles, Nate’s longtime friend and the trio’s South African guide. Together, this foursome must outsmart a carnivore that not only slays an entire village but dines indiscriminately on poachers and adolescent girls alike. Not since Scar betrayed Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion King has a big cat behaved quite this badly.
Beast is directed by Baltasar Kormakur, the Icelandic filmmaker responsible for such previous survival yarns as Adrift (2018), Everest (2015), and The Deep (2012), the last of which was Iceland’s submission for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards. A steady if uninspired hand behind the camera, Kormakur excels at rendering human exhaustion but is less sure of himself when his characters’ fatigue gives way to raw terror. The result, an exact reversal of what one expects from a feature about lion attacks, is a picture that nails the quiet moments but offers up indifferent set pieces of a kind that wouldn’t have been out of place in a made-for-TV movie in the mid-1990s.
To be sure, the blame for this state of affairs lies partly with Beast’s CGI team. Tasked with the development of the film’s most important character, Kormakur’s digital crew have spawned a monster that is simultaneously enormous and insubstantial, a shadow puppet given tenuous flesh and set to jittery motion. Easily the worst CGI creation since the hilariously counterfeit sharks of 1999’s Deep Blue Sea, Beast’s headliner is unbound by either mortality or physics, shaking off tranquilizer darts, bullets, and fire and darting about with increasingly preposterous speed. It is, of course, fully possible to wring suspense from less-than-perfect materials, and one or two of the film’s moments pile the tension on well enough. Yet even Beast’s foremost action scenes are suspect, so great is their debt to a certain Steven Spielberg dinosaur flick. (Note a supporting character’s Jurassic Park t-shirt.) The job of an August release is to earn its budget back and sell some popcorn, not reinvent the moviemaking wheel. Nevertheless, Kormakur’s choices are, at times, almost shockingly derivative.
Where the production goes right is in its strong casting, an undertaking that, while obviously political, grants emotional heft to a plot that would otherwise be lighter than air. Elba, always a welcome figure, does persuasive work as a put-upon father torn between anger and grief. Teenage actors Halley and Jeffries are utterly believable as girls on the cusp of womanhood, pulling naturally away from their remaining parent even as heartache exacerbates the separation. Best of all is Copley as the family’s companion and guide, a thankless role made into something substantive by the talented Capetonian. So what if Beast barrels toward an ending one can see coming from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro? Kormakur’s well-selected ensemble greatly eases the passage.
Is Beast a good movie? Don’t be ridiculous. It is, however, a perfectly serviceable late-summer treat, as fleetingly enjoyable as cotton candy at the county fair.
Graham Hillard is managing editor of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a Washington Examiner magazine contributing writer.
