Film Review: Idris Elba's 'Beast' has B-movie bite

Sharks, grizzlies, giant snakes and rampaging apes have traditionally been the go-to choices for animal-kingdom antagonists in survival thrillers. Lions not so much. Maybe the king of the jungle has always been too regal, too majestic — too heroic — to be lowered to the status of mere summer-movie marauder.

But the circle of life also pertains to movies, and it was probably inevitable that the lion's time would come. That's, at least, the nature of 'Beast,' a surprisingly agile and nifty B-movie graced by Idris Elba's formidable presence, fluid camerawork and tolerable levels of implausibility.

It's a movie well engineered as a late-summer diversion — a big cat movie for the dog days of August — that Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur ('Adrift,' 'Everest') insures stays well within the paths of man-against-nature films before it. But while the lion is CGI, the South African location is genuine, and Kormákur and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot's long, well-choreographed takes give 'Beast,' currently playing in UAE cinemas, an immersive quality well beyond the genre's usual slapdash cutting.

Watch the trailer below:

But how do you make a lion a diabolical hunter? 'Beast,' written by Ryan Engle, opens with poachers mowing down a pride of lions. But one — a big one — escapes, and has a preternatural taste for avenging the killings and protecting its territory. The lion's ferocity is easy to empathize with, ever to root for. Having had his family taken from him, he's like the Liam Neeson of lions.

This is what Nate Samuels (Elba) and his two daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Jeffries), walk into. They've just arrived in South Africa, a trip that Nate hopes will be a healing one for the family. They're still reeling from the death of Nate's wife from cancer, a loss that Mere and Norah partly blame on Nate, a doctor. The pair had also separated a year before her death, adding to the family friction.

Three stars out of four