Beasts of No Nation

Matching Fukunaga’s proven storytelling grace with a story truly worth the telling, the result is explosively authentic and yet lyrical...

This dramatization will twists your insides, no doubt about it.

Idris Elba gives an intense performance as the boy’s commanding officer and eventual father figure; his character comes across as monstrous a...

From production design to performances and choreography, Beasts of No Nation is a paragon of grim vibrancy. But where it brims over superficia...

The picture reminds us… that there are fates worse than death.

The world here is so ugly that only beautiful tracking shots, rich close-ups and adroit handheld work could make it bearable.

"Beasts of No Nation" is an act of gripping empathy.

It is, at times, not the easiest film to watch, but it’s artfully made and will leave audiences feeling as if their world has expanded.

Your job is just to watch it, as hard and necessary as that may be.

The film can get so emotionally and spiritually punishing that it needs Elba’s industrial magnetism to keep you on side. And vile as the Commandant...

This is a harrowing film to watch. In spite of the vibrant jungle greens and the searing sun, it’s as bleak a vision of modern warfare as...

Attah is an industrious little actor, but his fall from innocence is not delineated with the same force as the carnage.

Never soft-pedals its bleakness, but it also manages to allow audiences to leave with some shred of hope for Agu and his future.

Beasts on No Nation makes a terrific vehicle for Elba and a grim reminder that even if we’re tired of hearing of it.

Part war story, part endurance test, this harrowing portrait of a young boy’s loss of innocence is gripping, gruelling, grown-up fare. That sa...

If anything, Beasts of No Nation’s horrors are overwhelming, and you may begin to feel like you’ve been in the jungle longer than Col...

The real star is Attah, a Ghanaian street kid plucked from obscurity, who imbues Agu with just the right mix of terror, brutality and the last rema...

An effective nightmare, and a solid piece of filmmaking, strong enough to make you wish that it could have borne the full weight of the traged...

The country goes unnamed, the warring factions aren’t always clear, but the nightmarish exploitation of children is made specific in the most...

Beasts of No Nation is the kind of sincere, powerful filmmaking that gives socially conscious drama a good name.

A very powerful and confidently made movie, a film that really puts its audience through the wringer, which finally refuses any palliative gestures...

Cary Fukunaga’s stark, beautifully shot drama was likely never meant to be a blockbuster; its brutal account of a child soldier in an unnamed Afric...

The film in the end seems more of an expertly orchestrated blood bath than a full-scale tragedy.

The unsentimental education of an African child soldier is captured with savage beauty and matter-of-fact horror in "Beasts of No Nation," a t...

The country goes unnamed, the warring factions aren’t always clear, but the nightmarish exploitation of children is made specific in the most...

It’s the remarkable Attah, whose young face reflects a hellish journey, that makes this fierce movie a blazing, indelible achievement.

The movie itself is an effective nightmare, and a solid piece of filmmaking, strong enough to make you wish that it could have borne the full...

Netflix made a movie that will probably not play very well on Netflix.

A great movie.

Fukunaga’s hurtling camera and taut cutting keep Beasts of No Nation only just this side of hallucinatory, and Elba is the kind of titanic actor to...

Fukunaga’s film is thus mired in a hazy, nightmarish fugue of violence and degradation, the director presenting a landscape of hell...

Idris Elba’s ferocious performance alone should be enough to keep Beasts afloat… and the True Detective fans who fell for Fukunaga and his ma...

Fukunaga and his actors – especially the two leads – have managed to create a riveting drama which is suitably appalling.

Fukunaga’s self-shot widescreen cinematography and Dan Romer’s swirling score lend an epic sweep to the harrowing, heartbreaking narrat...

Fukunaga imbues this study of ma­nipu­la­tion and manufactured loyalty with an unsettling degree of visual richness and lush natural detail.

Idris Elba gives a powerhouse performance as the warlord of a rebel African army that trains children as soldiers. The Oscar for Best Supporti...

Fukunaga is a dazzling stylist, and at times the shifting palettes of the cinematography and the brilliant camera moves (he’s also the DP on t...

A bold portrayal of a boy soldier in a brutal, bloody conflict, anchored by commanding performances from Idris Elba and 14 year-old...

Fukunaga, coming off his potent direction of the first season of HBO’s True Detective, proves he is an artist who can work, with staggering s...

Fukunaga not only directed the film but also co-wrote the screenplay and served as director of photography. His efforts have resulted in a bra...

The necessity of circumstances dictates everything anyone does here and you can only react with varying degrees of outrage, anger, disgust, pity, e...

The mood is one of spiralling panic, but the editing has a methodical chop-chop-chop that makes a crisp narrative sense of the chaos.

It’s a powerful tale of lost innocence, albeit sometimes heavy-handed in its depiction of the plight of African child soldiers.

It wants to immerse itself entirely in Agu’s experience, yet the filmmaker can’t resist standing aloft in scenes that underscore the so...

It’s a credit to Fukunaga as a filmmaker-and his outstanding cast, nearly all of them first-timers aside from Elba-that Beasts is both a...

Grim, grueling and gripping.

Beasts tells a broadly traumatic story and tells it well, but lacks the kinds of specifics that could make it a truly memorable film.

The atrocities against children begin to acquire an unwelcome redundancy in their relentlessness and threaten to inure the viewer.

The British star Idris Elba finally gets a film role to match his breakthrough television performance in The Wire, a role that showcases his d...

Fukunaga brings flair, muscular storytelling, directness and a persuasively epic sweep to this brutal, heartrending movie.

The idea that there may be life after war and murder, even for the murderers, and what that might look like – what burdens you might be allowe...

A consuming, harrowing adventure story that holds onto hope in spite of horror.

Fukunaga’s hurtling camera and taut cutting keep Beasts of No Nation only just this side of hallucinatory, and Elba is the kind of titanic ac...

I never felt emotionally exploited by the terrors on screen. Rather, Beasts of No Nation is an act of gripping empathy.

Full of committed performances, particularly from Elba and the impressive young actor Abraham Attah, Beasts Of No Nation is a project of considerab...