Back in the summer of 2022, cinemas around North America were gearing up for a film that would be more accurately characterized as a promise. That film was Beast, and the promise was that Idris Elba was absolutely, positively going to fight a lion. This was one of the most brilliant cinematic promises ever made, as most would agree that Idris Elba fighting a lion is very much worth watching.
It went on to gross $59 million against a $36 million production budget; a solid accomplishment considering its competition with Bullet Train, Top Gun: Maverick, and Nope at the time. Nowadays, it’s making a similar accomplishment on streaming.
Per FlixPatrol, this day of Oct. 22 has seen Beast claw its way up the worldwide Max rankings and settle in at sixth place, ahead of 2024’s Will Smith box office bastion Bad Boys: Ride or Die in ninth place, and Arthur the King — the Mark Wahlberg-led drama about an adventure racer that befriends a lost dog before taking him on an adventure through the Dominican wilderness — in 10th place.
Beast stars Elba as Dr. Nate Samuels, a widowed father of two daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries), who he’s had trouble being present for ever since he lost his wife (their mother) to cancer. Hoping to reconnect as a family, he plans a family vacation to South Africa, where his wife grew up. The only problem? An unbelievably pissed-off lion happens to be lurking nearby, and Nate and his family are in its crosshairs.
Beast‘s sworn mission is to put Elba toe-to-toe with a lion, and it succeeds without a scratch (without a metaphorical scratch, that is; the actual scratches are many and extreme). The man vs lion combat makes for solid entertainment, but Beast doesn’t skimp on overall storytelling, either.
You see, the reason the lion is so pissed off is because hunters slaughtered its entire family, and now Nate is trying to prevent that lion from bestowing the same fate on his own. In this way, Beast offers genuinely fascinating emotions and ideas; we can cheer for Nate, while still being saddened by the necessity of the lion’s defeat, and even reflect on how the cycle of life and death inherent in the lifespan of every animal only becomes tragic, or even immoral, when humans get involved.
Beast doesn’t explore these ideas of tragedy, survival, or the emotional heft of the natural world beyond their relevance to Nate’s peril. Still, even a lukewarm film gains traction when it commits to honest storytelling, rooted primarily in emotion; a narrative that feels sincere beckons us to a sincere kind of analysis, both of a particular story beat and, by extension, the whole movie. This give and take between the emotional impact of a film, and the emotional response of a viewer, is the movie magic in Beast that nobody talks about, presumably because its more spectacular movie magic — that of Idris Elba-versus-a-lion — takes precedence.
Published: Oct 22, 2024 02:54 pm