Beasts of No Nation

i loved the movie not because its shot in my country but the content of the story and cast was done spot on. I just pray that all political leaders take a cue from this movie and past ones in this format not to plunge the world into this form of darkness.Best Indie Movie for sure @ the Oscars Idris you rocked it. This is a must watch for every household doesn't matter if you black,white,Asian,hispanic etc it can happen to any of us,some children are really suffering to PTSD due to political injustices that has led to war in many countries,lets be tolerant of each other and wish for a better brighter future for us all.

One of the better war movies i saw lately. Really cool cinematography that enhances the beauty of Africa thats being taken for granted. It does a really good job immersing you into the war and make you care about the characters.

Its about a kid who loses his family to war then is forced to join the mercenaries. We watch his transformation from an innocent child into a soldier as he questions his own actions and trying to survive.

I've heard more than one person say that they can't watch a movie like "Beasts of No Nation." It's a sentiment I understand. After all, who really wants to watch a movie about child soldiers recruited to become killers in savage African civil wars? But these things are happening, and the bare minimum I can if I want to respect myself as a citizen of the world is to watch movies about it, and fictional ones at that. This isn't even a documentary.

And if people can get past the premise, they will find themselves watching a gripping film. A tough one, yes, and one that might make your stomach churn. But it's extremely well made, with excellent performances from child actor Abraham Attah and Idris Elba, as the child protagonist and the leader who recruits him, respectively. This young child experiences a multitude of things, any one of which would permanently scar virtually anyone. And the film doesn't offer a contrived happy-ish ending to reward us for sitting through the suffering, which is one of the things I most appreciated about it. Because let's be honest; is there even a remote chance that stories like the one told here could end happily?

In this year of bickering about the whiteness of the Oscars, this film and its lack of nominations being held up repeatedly as an example, I can at least feel like I did my part -- you don't get much further away from white Hollywood and the stories it likes to tell than this film.

Grade: A-

Agu is a young boy in an unnamed African nation in the midst of a civil war. There are no services or school for him and his young friends. His father is a local leader. He lives in a buffer zone protected by Nigerian peacekeepers until the peace collapses. Government forces massacre the local population. Agu escapes as his father and brother are killed. He is captured by a rebel force led by Commandant (Idris Elba) who grooms him to be a child soldier.

This is a methodical depiction of the brutalization of a childhood. Idris Elba has a commanding powerful presence. The kid is an appealing performer. That's why his corruption is so demoralizing. It's a harsh, heart-breaking movie. It's a Netflix movie that is cinematic in quality. The plot is pretty simple and the kid's journey is relatively straight forward. Fukunaga delivers an unflinching look into this slice of the world.

I thought Beasts of No Nation was an excellent movie. It's certainly hard to watch but even though it's hard it is a very good movie. What makes it special is that it's a movie about real life events. Shameful events yes but real events. The fact that we live in such an horrible world where in some countries kids can not be kids anymore, but brainwashed killing machines is maybe incomprehensive for some people that have no clue what's happening outside their cozy neighborhood, but it's the hard reality. Child soldiers used by power hungry fools to do their dirty job is not an illusion anymore. The actors, especially the young ones were sublime. Very powerful acting. They made me think about all the misery that goes around in Africa. Very good filming as well. Like I said before the story might be hard to watch but it's certainly a must see to understand the problematics of some African countries.