Beasts of No Nation (2015)

“Bullet is just eating everything, leaves, trees, ground, person. Eating them. Just making person to bleed everywhere. We are just like wild animals now, with no place to be going. Sun, why are you shining at this world? I am wanting to catch you in my hands, to squeeze you until you can not shine no more. That way, everything is always dark and nobody’s ever having to see all the terrible things that are happening here.” – Agu

Number of Times Seen – 1 (2 Nov 2015)

Brief Synopsis – A young boy must become a child soldier in order to survive in his war-torn African country.

My Take on it – It’s truly amazing how big Netflix has become lately because they are able to do things that no other distributor is able to do because of their resources.

A few years back, they started making TV shows and the advantage they had was to release an entire season at once so viewers never had to wait weeks to see what would happen on their favorite show.

With this film; they were able to break new ground and distribute their own original film into the theater and online simultaneously helping them earn money from both endeavors.

This movie can get very graphic, but some of these scenes are shot so amazingly that it’s hard not to watch since we all know that there are many places in the world where this storyline is being played out each and every day for real.

The whole movie focuses on one main character and we get to see that different levels of power and justice prevail in most societal structures.

Abraham Attah does an amazing job as Agu which helps us believe the story that we are being told.

This movie is filmed in a way that it seems in certain scenes as if this were a real true life story. It feels like a hybrid of a biopic and a documentary.  This helps draw us in even more.

We quite easily feel sympathy for Agu but we don’t really get to know enough of the other character’s backgrounds in order to identify more with them.

Bottom and Line – Very powerful film that has numerous very difficult to watch scenes. Amazing acting job by the child actor Attah. Feels like a cross between a documentary and a biopic despite being neither. Told in a matter of fact way which results in only sympathy for the main character Agu and for no one else because we don’t get to know anyone else well enough. Big win for Netflix as this was their first theatrically released movie which will pave the way for many more to come. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Cary Fukunaga cast real former child soldiers and members of the various factions from the Sierra Leone and Liberian Civil War such the Liberian Armed Forces, the LURD, and the CDF as as extras and consultants but they ran into difficulty getting everyone onto the set in Ghana because they were held up in the Ivory Coast as suspected mercenaries (From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy

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