Often in child-centered war narratives, atrocities without reason merely map themselves onto the young protagonists. One night, the Commandant summons Agu to his quarters and rapes him. Agu and other children in the battalion are raped by the Commandant in return for small tokens. instruments that your great warriors and kings have been doing their
Idris Elba brings a terrifying charisma to the role of the Commandant, who tells his young charges: "I am your future!", but nothing is as distressing as the look on Agu's face as he learns to. While high on gun juice, he mistakes a female prisoner of war for his mom, accuses her of being a witch, then stomps her daughter to death. Harrowing and devastating depiction of a child soldier; it's overlong but made with power and intent, and Abraham Attah is superb. A child and a killer. Without school, Agu and his friends restlessly busy themselves with activities such as parading around that television shell. "A boy is a dangerous thing," says the Commandant, who leads an army of young soldiers fighting a . Cocaine-fueled feral children rampage toward Monrovia during the Second Liberian Civil War in Jean-Stphane Sauvaires Johnny Mad Dog (2008). I have killed a man. with updates on movies, TV shows, Rotten Tomatoes podcast and more. He rarely recalls his other family members. These films take their cues from an established and ongoing Western literary tradition wherein the exotic continent, supposedly populated by beasts and brutes, requires white eyes to peer into and reveal its mysteries. One of the towering figures of postwar French literature, Marguerite Duras was also an innovative filmmaker whose rarefied cinematic style dared audiences to see less and listen more. Beasts of No Nation (2015) Full Cast & Crew See agents for this cast & crew on IMDbPro Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga Writing Credits Cast (in credits order) verified as complete Produced by Music by Dan Romer Cinematography by Cary Joji Fukunaga Film Editing by Pete Beaudreau Mikkel E.G. He had studied Central and West African conflicts, and specifically the Sierra Leone Civil War, as an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the 1990s. [7][8] It premiered on Netflix on October 16, 2015.[9]. Then he comes upon some armed and dangerous boys about his age or slightly older, their hats and torsos bedecked with camouflaging vegetation (a very "Lord of the Flies" image, pushed maybe a bit too hard) and then we're into the main story, which finds Agu being protected and trained by a man known only as The Commandant (Idris Elba). Beasts of No Nation. As they teach him to hold his own in the war and kill, the raw human emotion begins to leap off the screen. It is a very violent film, and therefore not for everybody, but it takes the viewer on a journey so compelling that it is not likely to be forgotten very soon. "Beasts of No Nation" does suffer from an extended running time and a slightly over calculated screenplay, which to me felt a little tame compared to it's subject matter. Remarkable work here, eye-opening. A boy is very, very dangerous.Elba, in probably the best performance of his career to date, plays the Commandant with remarkable depth. The website's critical consensus reads, "Beasts of No Nation finds writer-director Cary Fukunaga working with a talented cast to offer a sobering, uncompromising, yet still somehow hopeful picture of war's human cost. Agu then shoots the woman while she is being raped on a bed. Available in select theaters and on Netflix October 16.SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/29qBUt7About Netflix:Netflix is the world's leading internet entertainment service with 130 million memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. The food is not cooked enough for fear that others will see the fire, and the water is known to contain human feces. 10th Chicago Critics Film Fest Features Past Lives, Blackberry, Sanctuary, Theater Camp, and Many More, A Road Paved with Bloodshed: High Plains Drifter Turns 50, Cannes 2023 Line-up Includes Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, and Many More, Ebertfest Welcomes Molly Cornyn as its New Project Coordinator. 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The Commandant retorts: A boy has hands to strangle and fingers to pull triggers . The sequence exemplifies the ways that opportunists can pose as revolutionary leaders and betray their countries for Western (and now Eastern) consumption. [23], The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by The Criterion Collection on August 31, 2021.[24]. Beasts of No Nation is a 2015 American war drama film written, co-produced, shot, and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. would recommend. that counts young boys among its numbersled by the charismatic It was screened in the main competition section of the 72nd Venice International Film Festival,[5][6] where it won the Marcello Mastroianni Award. [4] On May 17, 2014, Participant Media, along with Mammoth Entertainment, came on board to co-finance the film, initially budgeted at $4.3 million but which ultimately cost about $6 million. From beginning to end The Child goes through his stages as he is more exposed to violence. They spout slogans, but it's clear that the slogans are less a justification for horrific violence than a pretext that gives them permission to do what they might have done anyway, in their imaginations, or on dark stretches of road in whatever part of the country they originally hailed from. Beasts of No Nation (2015) is a devastating picture, striking in color and tone, disarming in its honesty. Balletic rage bursts out during a village raid: a hallucinating Agu sees the African bush in a freakish infrared tint, and with disturbing precision shoots down unarmed civilians. It is the worst sin, but am knowing, too, it is the right thing to be doing, Agu says fearfully to himself. Once you've gone down this skeptical road you keep noticing more and more things about "Beasts" that feel somehow untrustworthy, or at least not immediately defensible. Agu joins in. As does Fukunagas prominent use of color. The smartest thing about "Beasts" is the link it draws between the Commandant's soul-sucking brand of motivational therapy and the grinning swagger of soldiers who invade Agu's village near the start of the film and terrorize Agu and his relatives along with other captured citizens. Amid an international crisis, a career diplomat juggles her new high-profile job as ambassador to the UK and her turbulent marriage to a political star. There, he comes across and is Director Cary Joji Fukunaga Writers Cary Joji Fukunaga Uzodinma Iweala Stars Abraham Attah Emmanuel Affadzi Then the country is turned upside-down by revolution. and tone, disarming in its honesty. Verified reviews are considered more trustworthy by fellow moviegoers. , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes. And then comes the question, maybe, of what, exactly, is being communicated in "Beasts of No Nation," beyond the fact that a boy has been horrendously traumatized by being conscripted and taught to torture and kill? Following a confrontation between a frustrated Preacher and paranoid Commandant, Agu and the soldiers all abandon the Commandant to surrender, ignoring his warnings that they will merely be thrown in jail and disowned by their families. Based on the same-titled novel by Uzodinma Iweala, a Nigerian doctor and sociologist who began the story as a thesis project at Harvard, the movie immediately puts us in the shoes (and sometimes bare feet) of its hero, eight year old Agu ( Abraham Attah ). It's also a dive off the cliff for Netflix, which acquired the movie for a whopping $12 . "Beasts of No Nation" was one of the best films of 2015, yet it didn't receive a single Oscar nomination. The film's director, writer and cinematographer, Cary Joji Fukunaga, is a master of imaginative and dynamic images; he proved as much in "Sin Nombre," "Jane Eyre" and season one of "True Detective," and he proves it again in this bloody, despairing film about a child soldier in a nonexistent African country. Beasts of No Nation 2015 | Maturity Rating: TV-MA | 2h 17m | Movies Based on Books When civil war tears his family apart, a young West African boy is forced to join a unit of mercenary fighters and transform into a child soldier. The Commandant eventually takes the battalion to the village of his birth where they visit a brothel. [21], On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 92% based on 146 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Largeof RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. Tap "Sign me up" below to receive our weekly newsletter Consider how Goodbloods deputy receives foreigner visitors, there to speculate over the countrys resources, but leaves the perturbed Commandant and his soldiers waiting in the lobby. The murals behind him read: Our Nation. 2015 | Maturity Rating: 18+ | 2h 17m | Dramas. 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