I imagine a scenario in which 10-year-old Agu (Abraham Attah) comes as a refugee to the United States and gets taken in by a quiet Christian family. At the dinner table, they all discuss world affairs and Agu has to point out that, while on the run from UN peace keepers in the jungle, he had to eat crickets out of desperation. Of course, then his battalion got shot up, and little of that mattered anyway. He might then go into the part where he shot fleeing men, women and children under orders. Of course, by that point, he had long since grown immune to the guilt … after the rapes and the execution by machete, that is. Maybe after dinner the family plays Monopoly or watches The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.
Where do you send a 10-year-old guilty of war crimes, anyway? Juvy Geneva? It wasn’t always like this. Agu and family live in military occupied town in Namibia. Before long, Agu’s life becomes less about “Imagination TV” and more about avoiding the guys with rifles. Mom and a sib or two can pay for a ride to the capital, but Agu and the other “men” folk stay behind. Within five minutes of screen time, Agu is the remaining family member. Fleeing to the jungle, he finds the NDF, a militant and aggressive group of men and boys who lack [fill in noun here]. Age matters little to this group: the NDF consists of soldiers, killers, very serious and violent males. It is, however, often weapons deprived and clothing optional – the latter demonstrated by an intimidating soldier aptly named “Tripod.”
The Commandant (Idris Elba) inspects all the troops personally, acting as father, caretaker, and personal Satan to the troops, few of whom are even a third his age. Commandant points out the children are welcomed by the rebellion – “their fingers can pull triggers, can they not?” And yet – women are not welcomed by the rebellion. What, they don’t have fingers? Look, I’m no doctor, and I only got a B in high school biology, but I’m pretty sure women have fingers.
Beasts of No Nation is about the loss of Agu’s innocence. It is an often ugly, hard-to-watch experience periodically interrupted with something even uglier and harder-to-watch. Want to see a young boy take a machete to an innocent man’s skull? That will lose some innocence in hurry, won’t it? Were that not enough, catch the moment where Commandant has some alone time with Agu. Sex and violence? This film has it all!
Geez, in South Africa, Idris Elba is legendary force of righteousness in Nelson Mandela. One country north and he is a bringer 
of evil. What is up with that? FWIW, this is arguably Idris Elba’s very best work on the big screen – or the Netflix screen, which is how I saw it.
This a film in which you could point to any rating from 0 to 4 stars and be right. Beasts of No Nation is such a raw exploration of innocence lost that I hated to denigrate it at all. But the truth is, for all the good intention of writer/director Cary Joji Fukunaga, I found this film fairly slow moving and one-dimensional. It’s also never easy to tell anything that’s going on in the film other than “that guy wants to kill that guy.” Speaking of which, very few of the characters are named and I had to look up where the film was supposed to be taking place. These are details you’ll want to get right in your next project, Cary. I hope that one is a tad more forgiving on my stomach.
The boy once caught, he learned to fight, he learned to shoot and kill
Internally, his mind can see the moral high ground still
Thrown into a civil war, where the worst comes from within
Agu ain’t an evil kid; he’s just been raised by sin
Not Rated (but treat it as a hard R), 137 Minutes
D: Cary Joji Fukunaga
W: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Genre: The horrors of war – Kids edition
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Pessimists
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Parents of grade school boys
