Beasts of No Nation Photos View all photos Movie Info As civil war rages in Africa, a fierce warlord (Idris Elba) trains a young orphan (Abraham Attah) to join his group of guerrilla soldiers.. Netflix. While Agu fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination Depicts the mechanics of war and does not shy away from explicit, visceral detail, and paints a complex, difficult picture of 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. [17], Netflix bought the worldwide distribution rights for around $12 million. They loved me. Starring: Idris Elba, Abraham Attah, Kurt Egyiawan. Two Black kids observe the scrimmage, like scouts on the pitch, leaning on the disused unit. [3] The book won the 2005 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction [4] and was adapted as a movie in 2015. 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. Based on the acclaimed novel by Uzodinma Iweala, Beasts of No Nation unfolds in an unnamed, civil-war-torn West African country, where the young Agu (Abraham Attah, in a haunting debut performance) witnesses carnage in his village before falling captive to a band of rebel soldiers led by a ruthless commander (an explosive Idris Elba), who molds . 2015 | Maturity Rating: 16+ | 2h 17m | Military Movies. This Netflix released picture really shows that they know how to find quality content for their streaming service, because at one point this film was being considered for Oscar buzz. While Agu hates the rape, he does not resist as he fears he will be killed by the Commandant if he does so. One of the other child soldiers drags the young girl with the woman and stomps the child to death. In this stunning debut novel, Agu, a young boy in an unnamed West African nation, is recruited into a unit of guerrilla fighters as civil war engulfs his country. 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Amy Kaufman, 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. They're people who either became criminals after putting on uniforms or always were criminals. He thinks about how he and his friend used to play at war and how this war is not the same. After that, you might realize that the Western commercial cinema almost never tells stories of Africa, except to sentimentalize European colonalism ("Out of Africa," "An African Dream", "The Ghost in the Darkness") or show the depths of depravity of which Africans are capable ("Hotel Rwanda," "The Last King of Scotland," this). Terms and Policies "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. This review is from Beasts of No Nation [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray] [2015]. He thinks about where to put people in the frame, how to light them, and how to move the camera, not merely to tell the story and showcase the dialogue and performances, but to boil a moment down to a single image, like the shot of Agu and his family hiding from invading soldiers in a shed, the passage of enemies outside indicated by the way that the light streaming through bullet holes in the door flickers as men pass by. Show only Verified Purchases. Read critic reviews. He wants to stop killing but fears that so doing will get him killed by the Commandant. And it's a short hop from there to the realization that this is the second recent, highly acclaimed film about dark-skinned people not directed by an African or an African-American that has the word "Beasts" in the title. Attahs narration, sporadically but pointedly deployed by Fukunaga, not only vocalizes the boys descent but, with its pronounced perspective, implies a kind of agency. 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. and the When civil war tears his family apart, a young West African boy is forced to join a unit of mercenary fighters and transform. When Agu meets the bare-chested, beret-wearing Commandant, a seeming father figure to the cultlike ragtag army, the leaders second-in-command (Kurt Egyiawan) comments that Agu is just a boy. Get info about new releases, sales, and our online publication, Current. Beasts of No Nation, based on the 2005 novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala, features a cast almost entirely made up of first-time actors (the lone exception is Elba). [4] It was not until after six years of research on the Sierra Leone Civil War that Fukunaga came across the Beasts of No Nation novel. Watch A Guide to the Style of Cary Joji Fukunaga. Agu befriends another young NDF child soldier, Strika, who never speaks. Hallucination and indoctrination, the surreal and the sublime, the melancholic and the suppressed are common themes of these rich texts, leveraged to precise, brutal effect. "Beasts of No Nation" wasn't just a high-stakes, death-defying production for its cast and crew. With rebel forces headed towards the village, many people flee to the country's capital for safety. We meet Agus slender, muscle-head older brother (Francis Weddey), a daffy teen with a love for dancing and women. However, despite living in a "buffer zone", they soon face the repercussions of losing their land, loved ones as well as a part of their identity. There, he comes across and is Agu's family belongs to a particular group that ousted the people who are now trying to take over the country (or as they might put it, take the country back). "A boy is a dangerous thing," says the Commandant, who leads an army of young soldiers fighting a . Fukunagas choice to preserve the subjectivity of Iwealas novel and do without the benefit of the doubt afforded by a supposedly objective camera opens up fascinating terrain. Harrowing and devastating depiction of a child soldier; it's overlong but made with power and intent, and Abraham Attah is superb. Not Rated. Following a brutal initiation process where Agu hacks an innocent captive to death with a machete, Agu becomes a fully-fledged member of the militia. The NRC (National Reformation Council), a fictional cold . 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. During one of the raids Agu, under the influence of brown-brown, mistakes a village-woman during a raid for his mother. A vast community of chimpanzees thrives in a forest in Uganda, navigating complex social politics, family dynamics and dangerous territory disputes. Starring: Idris Elba, Abraham Attah, Kurt Egyiawan. A child and a killer. Why, then, does it feel dubious in certain ways, and perhaps troubling for the wrong reasons? The audience can thus view the heinous crimes they commit as being brought about solely by situation or place. Sign in to rate and Watchlist for personalized recommendations. You can feel the grimy, systematic hands of colonialism during the Commandants visit with NDF leader Dada Goodblood (Jude Akuwudike). Get the freshest reviews, news, and more delivered right to your inbox! 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. The cameras eager lensflushed by the vibrant, lemon-kissed African suncaptures Agus beaming smile, his keenness for approval, his disappointment at the soldiers unconvinced reaction to his gambit. The NRC (National Reformation Council), a fictional cold-blooded [7][8] It premiered on Netflix on October 16, 2015.[9]. It looks like you're offline. The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. A young boy, Agu, lives in a small village with his parents, older brother, and younger sibling. Remarkable work here, eye-opening. Parents need to know that Beasts of No Nation is a brutal, uncompromising look at the life of a young guerilla fighter in an unnamed African country. 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? The film received several Academy Award nominations. All three projects put on display Fukunagas trained eye for dangerous, sublime landscapes populated by, as Egner notes, broken striversand the same potent components also crop up in Beasts of No Nation. A civil war is breaking out in an unspecified West African country. A rounded square frame captures children playing soccer on a lush field. It is the worst sin, but am knowing, too, it is the right thing to be doing, Agu says fearfully to himself. Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander. A feature film was adapted by Cary Fukunaga, starring Abraham Attah as Agu and Idris Elba as the commander. English, Director: Ivan Bondarev (Nikolai Burlyaev), with hard-edged Soviet mettle, avenges the extermination of his family by the Nazis on a nightmarish, swampy front line in Andrei Tarkovskys Ivans Childhood (1962). Starring: Idris Elba, Abraham Attah, Kurt Egyiawan Watch all you want. For the film, see, Audio recording: Uzodinma Iweala reading from, "Award: The Los Angeles Times Book Awards", "Idris Elba meets his Waterloo in Ghana", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Beasts_of_No_Nation&oldid=1105741169, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 21 August 2022, at 15:23. Based on the experiences of Agu, a child fighting in the civil war of an unnamed, fictional West African country. Agu's battalion is led by the Commandant, who takes Agu under his wing. Beasts of No Nation (2015) is a devastating picture, striking in color Starring Abraham Attah and Idris Elba, the director Fukunaga dive deep into the horrors of war. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). By A.O. 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. Attah shoulders the weight of Agus unfathomable experiences with an impossibly light touch. Idris Elba, Writer: 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. He lives with his family in an unnamed West African country (though the film was shot in Ghana), in a buffer zone protected from the bloody conflict by Nigerian soldiers. His wish to escape the army finally comes true when Rambo leads a successful revolt against the Commandant in a period of agonising lack of basic necessities. Beasts of No Nation. Luftenant is then replaced by a soldier named Rambo, thus named because of his bloodthirst. Donate . [4] On June 6, 2014, Ghanaian actors Ama K. Abebrese, Grace Nortey and David Dontoh joined the film. That knowledge, for the viewers part, instills the oncoming horrors with even greater terror. . 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). They won't be able to see your review if you only submit your rating. Idris Elba's turn as the fiery Commandant earned Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations and won an Independent Spirit Award. The Commandant's lieutenant, Two I-C, will take control of the battalion, and the Commandant will be made Deputy Chief of Security under the leader. The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. He offers the rubbish to a bemused soldier, and using the shell to frame themselves, the kids perform, in Wakaliwood fashion, soap operas, dance numbers, and raucous kung-fu fights. Coming Soon, Regal 2023 Best Buy. The prostitute professes that it was an accident, but the Commandant and his men shoot the women and leave the city with the battalion. Synopsis. The shabby army surrounds him, hanging on his every word like raindrops on leaves as he implores the young to seize their own wealth, to remember that this unit is an unbreakable familywords that will take on the added sinister cast of grooming in light of the sexual abuse we learn about later. Cary Joji Fukunaga, Release Date (Theaters): "Beasts" does a solid job of showing how quickly a child's moral compass can be knocked off-axis, how men like The Commandant can bask in the adoration of immature or gullible followers and become despots within the dictatorships they serve, and how easy it is to teach a child to kill and rape when the reward (in addition to food, shelter and protection) is love, or a twisted facsimile. He narrates parts of the movie in a mostly embittered but occasionally lyrical voice-over, telling us about his mother and father and siblings and the peaceful life they once enjoyed. Then the country is turned upside-down by revolution. Downloads only available on ad-free plans. But when his wish is granted, he begins to realize the alternate fate is far from perfect. The film was photographed and completed digitally, and Criterion appears to be using a master supplied to them by Netflix. Described by director Joan Micklin Silver as a kind of weird romantic comedy, this defiantly ambiguous exploration of amour fou presents its obsessive antihero in all his contradictions. No armor. The children of Germany Year Zero and Johnny Mad Dog do not articulate their feelings regarding their debased environments. 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. Barely any clothes to speak of. In-store pricing may vary. The Native Defense Forces (NDF), a rising rebel faction in the country, adopts Agu into their ranks. 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. Cary Joji Fukunaga, Producer: 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. [23], The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by The Criterion Collection on August 31, 2021.[24]. Beasts of No Nation, eponymously named after a book, is a film tracing the turmoils of a supposed Sierra Leone. Beasts of No Nation Full Movie (2015) FREEWATCH FOR FREE! https://4k.movieasu.com/movie/tt1365050/OR DOWNLOAD! https://www.youtube.com/@MOVIEASUOFFIC. Fukunaga didnt take on this heavy subject lightly. During an inspiring speech that the Commandant gives to his troops in the mountains shortly after Agus arrival, Fukunaga uses a static single camera angle to capture Elba, perched with a cane, atop a rock. 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