Beast

Cert - 15, Run-time - 1 hours 33 minutes,

Director - Baltasar Kormákur

After breaking down on a South African safari a father (Idris Elba) must protect his two daughters (Leah Jeffries, Iyana Halley) from a powerful lion separated from its pride.

There’s a point in 2018’s The Meg where the film proves just how much its tightrope-walking the line between entertainment from action and entertainment from ridiculousness. It’s the point where the film earns its unofficial title of Jason Statham: Shark Puncher. However, as Beast becomes Idris Elba: Lion Puncher - a moment placed almost as the ‘money shot’ in the trailer - the film manages to just about stay on the side of action.

For those who have seen the trailer what you get is very much what you likely expect. As Elba plays Dr Nate Samuels, a father trying to properly connect with his two teenage daughters, Norah (Leah Jeffries) and Meredith (Iyana Halley) by taking them to the South African homeland of their recently-passed mother. On meeting old family friend and gamekeeper Martin (Sharlto Copley) the group embark on a deadly safari when, after breaking down, they encounter a lion separated from its pride - after all being killed early on by poachers - determined to ensure that its land remains only its land.

As the film travels along a somewhat standard survival route of the predator leaving and returning seemingly stronger and angrier each time - there’s only really one moment where you think ‘it shouldn’t have survived that’ - it manages to keep you engaged thanks to the different scenarios it throws into the mix. One particular sequence involving an interaction with poachers in the middle of the night captures your interest as you wait to see both how that element will play out and how the lion may eventually play into it.

Thanks to the ideas that are thrown into the mix over the course of the largely well-fitting 93-minute run-time Beast avoids a feeling of repetition and generally travels along its course rather well. There’s tension to be found within a number of the action scenes which largely act as the focus away from more conventional emotionally-leaning beats such as a distant relationship between Nate and his eldest.

Yet, the tension is still there. And it’s testament to the film that it’s still there seeing as we generally don’t get a lot of close-up action with the lion, who we do see leaping across the screen attacking minor characters or simply prowling around the surrounding landscape. With one or two jumps, and the aforementioned tension, being present there’s enough response to be found towards Beast and the action that it presents in each stage to make it worthwhile.

There’s a consistency to the pacing which helps hold things up and stops them from circling back and feeling over-familiar to the point of being dull. Perhaps the best way to describe it is indeed: Idris Elba punches an (albeit CGI) lion.

Jamie Skinner -Three stars