Beasts of No Nation (2015)

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

A Brilliant Conflict

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

A film about political and civil unrest in Africa (the specific country is never named) and as heartbreaking and terrifying as you'd imagine. Wonderfully made, the camera work puts you right in the centre alongside these people having their already tough worlds torn apart. It's not easy to watch, the depiction of callous disregard for life, especially seen through the eyes of a child is often too much to bare. As if that's not harrowing enough, what follows is beyond horrific. Incessant killing, exploitation of children, power hungry people with complete disregard for life and any moral standard. In all the confusion it's not always obvious who the real monsters are. As the film goes on though, is seems everyone is and as things escalate, it's hard to except that despite this being dramatised, it's no doubt based on a sad harsh reality. Elba is frighteningly good, so much so, you wonder if you were able to reach into that world, would you kill him and become a monster too. Abraham Attah, who plays Agu, the child who leads us through this brutal world is amazing. This is his first outing and it's quite incredible, I've no doubt he'll go on to even greater things (although he's signed up for a Spider-Man film). The music is the only true positive element of the film itself, be it the traditional stuff or the ethereal score, it's outstanding, but never masks the turmoil of the characters and their existence.

Agu (Abraham Attah) is a young lad growing up in impoverished western Africa. He lives a somewhat idyllic life under the circumstances. The film builds his family life in the background involving a war zone between the army and rebels. Through a series of circumstances, the army kills his kinsmen and Agu manages to escape and reluctantly joins forces with the rebels and vows revenge. Agu has some first person narrative. He struggles with cultic aspects of the rebel army and battalion leader. He discovers they have no respect for life, but he has no alternative and curses the sun for shining on him. He realizes with death all around him, he has been robbed of his childhood, perhaps with thoughts and language well beyond his years. This is not a story of hope or despair. It is a drama about life, a life that doesn't have a Hollywood ending or twist. Guide: F-bomb. No sex or nudity. English subtitles in places. I would recommend watching the film with the subtitles as the English is difficult to understand at times.

The Netflix original movie, Beast of No Nation, directed by Cary Fukunaga is about a young boy, named Agu, that joins a militia group and gets brainwashed into killing people on his journey. During this film, children are being recruited to be child soldiers and are fighting for this Commandment and this rebel group. They don't really know why they are fighting and who, but they get orders from the capital. The movie starts by Agu and his family living peacefully, but then there is a warning that troops are attacking so the family splits and the father, brother, and grandfather stay. The family is captured and Agu watches as his family is slaughtered. He then joins a rebel group and takes revenge and brainwashed by this group. He does these terrible things and at the end the group surrendered to the UN and Agu lives in this missionary school. This film mostly focuses on revenge and brainwashing children to become these child slaves. The director of this film is Cary Fukunaga and he is an American director from California. Some of his other films and TV shows are True Dectective and Jane Eyre. this movie, Beast of No Nation was picked up by Netflix for a reported 12 million dollars and had an effort to make it into original films. He directed and wrote the script after working on it for 6 years. He then came across the Beast of No Nation novel and was inspired by the Sierra Leone Civil War. he wanted to translate what happened in the book and base the ideas into movie to people that never read it. The film is a historical fiction because it is not set in a real place and just says a western country in Africa. Some people might find that annoying because like the settings and why this is happening. The movie escalated quickly with the family enjoying life and then all a sudden is war torn and the kid family dying. The audience doesn't have time to recuperate what is happening and the movie keeps going. You never get the age of the kid or why there is a fight going on. During the film, the audience get to know that the group is the NDF and are getting orders by the capital. Then, it leaves the audience to guess if Agu joined the same men that killed his family because it never specified who those men that killed his family were. But, past those points the plot was amazing and the actors portrayed those characters well. They had the best of the best actors like Idris Elba, who played in Thor, Star Trek Beyond and The Jungle Book, and Abraham Attah, which was casted in the new Spiderman movie. These people made the audience feel like they were in the moment and felt the intensity. The action in the movie was suspenseful and horrific. The graphic scene with the machete captured the brutality of the moment and what was going on then. The director tried and he succeeded into making this movie as realistic as possible and gave the audience a brutal, but meaningful movie. The movie is not biased in any way because there weren't really a good guy versus bad guy. The audience couldn't really tell and that is what audiences are going to guess about since it it is in a unspecified war and country. The director goes on both sides when it comes to picking a side for the biased. He does capture Agu's side, but also deals with the NDF side and why they are killing. The director does a very good job trying to twist the story a little from the actual event. This movie was inspired by the book he read about the Sierra Leone War. If you look at the history of that there was a civil war and rebel groups just like the film. Also, in the film a lot of people died and in the true event over 50,000 people passed away. So the director does base this movie off that event and some may say that it is from that Civil War, but no one is for sure. It might be a mix of countries due to the geography or even their history of wars. Also, in the film they were mining gold and if you look at the history of the Sierra Leone War they were also mining for minerals and gold. That is why this film is called a historical fiction because of the events and the fictional characters. Therefore, overall this film did an amazing job capturing the events and the brutality Agu had to face and also the acting didn't disappoint. It made the audience feel the intensity of this war and the emotional roller-coaster of the hardships people faced in the country where they lived. I would give this movie a 8 out of 10.

Beasts of No Nation is a Netflix original movie about Child slavery and its role during an African civil war. It is not known in which African country this movie takes place in but the idea was to show that situations like this movie happen in virtually every African country. The film takes us through the life of an African village boy named Agu (Abraham Attah). He is just a normal African boy in a buffer zone at first. What seem to be African rebels come through the village and start to kill anything that moves. Agu witnesses his father and big brother get assassinated by these rebels but he manages to escape. He then gets captured by the rebel group that he would end up joining. The Commandant brings Agu under his wing along with the other ruthless savages and he slowly becomes a rebel, like the ones that killed Agu's brother and father. Agu basically gets brainwashed into something he hated aka African Rebels. Overall, this movie does a fantastic job showing how child slavery really can effect a Civil War. It does a great job showing the psychological brainwash of making a child soldier as well. Abraham Attah aka the actor that plays Agu did an exceptional job as his role as the little African boy. Personally one of the best child actor performances I have ever seen. The film itself surprised me. I thought this movie was gonna be maybe a little boring but, it was the opposite. I really enjoyed it. The picture was phenomenal. The acting was pretty good as well, headlined by Abraham Attah's portrayal of the fictional Agu. If i had to rate this movie I would give it 8 or 8 and a half stars out of 10.