This week on The Good, The Bad, the Netflix, I have a new movie from director Cary Joji Fukunaga. His last film was Jane Eyre from 2011, and he was also a director on the HBO series True Detective.
The movie is in select theaters and on Netflix. It’s getting great reviews’, and seems to be on the cover of all the film websites I follow. It’s big news for Netflix in the original content game, ás I have talked about before. We are in this weird stage of people getting rid of cable subscriptions and moving to streaming services. So, now the name of the game is: who will have the best original content?
The Film is Beasts of No Nation. The film follows the life of a young boy turned killing machine in West Africa. He was devastated when his father was slaughtered in the civil war that is taking over their nation. He becomes a mercenary in a unit of child solders led by the Commandant, played by Eldris Elba. He is very used, almost to death, and also sees that there is no meaning to it. The truth finally starts to set in and he realizes that the only way he will get out of the turmoil is death. The film feels very real and powerful, mainly because of its brutality. I feel that this is what makes it so powerful. We see a lot of violence in movies and become desensitized to it. We also tend to ignore political issues and other real world issues that are going on outside of this country. This film brings us the real-world brutality that a lot of people find shocking.
For Netflix’s first feature film, Beasts of No Nation proves to show that they are doing things right.
