Kormákur stages the film as a series of suspenseful long takes that follow the characters while allowing us to see what’s happening behind and around them.

A lion might be the adversary in Beast, but the movie makes it abundantly clear that the poachers are the real villains.) Early on, Martin brings the family to visit another pride, one he has helped raise, and we see that these animals, while enormously powerful, can also be playful. (The filmmakers do take some care not to demonize lions in general. The lion has it out for all humans, and the fact that Nate and his kids are being accompanied by close family friend Martin (Sharlto Copley), a wildlife biologist who also works as an enforcer for the local nature preserve and sometimes even hunts poachers, makes no difference to the creature. It is this quality of Elba’s that Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur homes in on most effectively in the wildlife thriller Beast, which besides being a tight little creature feature also manages to be the story of a man learning to overcome his guilt and live in the present.Įlba plays Nate Samuels, a widowed doctor who is traveling with his two daughters, Norah (Leah Jeffries) and Meredith (Iyana Halley), to his recently deceased wife’s home village in South Africa when they are confronted and pursued by a lion whose pride has been wiped out by poachers. It can encompass the scheming, charismatic Stringer Bell of The Wire or the deranged, ambitious Commandant of Beasts of No Nation. This makes for an intriguing star persona.

Not that he’s inattentive as an actor but that his characters are preoccupied - whatever situation they find themselves in, they often seem burdened by something greater. One of the keys to Idris Elba’s appeal is that he always looks as though he has something else on his mind.

Beasts movie