SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Beasts of No Nation is an American-Ghanaian coming-of-age war story about a young boy who loses his family in the horrors of warfare and turns into a gun-wielding rebel member himself. It might remind some of Spielberg's Empire of the Sun, but it's more action-packed, realistic and gritty than it is poetic.
Told from the perspective of a kid named Agu (Abraham Attah), we spend a good first act establishing his pre-world conditions; the world he will never get to see again once the war hits. Selling imagination TV, scamming citizens for money at traffic and family-dinner burping are some of the most heartwarming scenes of a normal family's life in a village portrayed here. The boy is naughty, playful and full of spirit, but most importantly, innocent; the very quality he'll no longer have in just a second as the stench of war creeps into his homeland. Once it does, all hell breaks loose. There's constant panic, hiding and running. Trying to stay alive in a container and fitting families into stuffed cars are tip of the struggles you'll witness, before the boy's father and brother are brutally slaughtered.
Enters the Commandant (Idris Elba) into his life, and little does little Agu know, he is about to become the exact person he despises. While it may seem like he has found the 'right' faction, the journey he goes through, from being initiated into the rebel party, massacring everyday villagers as part of ambush missions, performing first murder to being raped by the very man he thought he could trust, teaches him that both sides of this war are mirror images of one another! Idris Elba plays an interesting antagonist mentor whose own status reigns above all else and sure enough, he does have his slimy ways of ensuring just that, including grooming and everything. The meeting between him and the Supreme Commandant (Jude Akuwudike) plus his conflict with Two I-C (Kurt Egyiawan) are engaging!
Cary Joji Fukunaga has crafted an extremely authentic film! All the people featured here, apart from Idris Elba and the main actor, you won't know who's acting and who's real. The sound and set design for the forest, village, rain, rituals, nighttime and fires are incredibly impressive! There's a steady progression of war narrated via the plot and in terms of content, there's absolutely zero compromises for the unflinching reality the director shows onscreen!