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| Idris Elba and Abraham Attah star in "Beasts of No Nation." |
Cary Fukunaga's "Beasts of No Nation" is a brutally harrowing, yet utterly captivating, adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala's novel of the same name. Set in an unspecified African country, the story is told through the eyes and meditation of Agu (Abraham Attah), a young boy who through the harsh realities of war, became a soldier—or more aptly, a savage war criminal.
After his family is slaughtered by rebels, Agu is adopted into a battalion comprised of children and young teenagers, helmed by a questionably-sane Commandant (Idris Elba). As the rest of these impressionable and revenge-seeking youth did before him, Agu falls in line behind his new 'father' and falls down a rabbit-hole of war. One filled with heroine-induced lunacy, blind obedience-driven acts of savagery, and a slow-burn toward the inevitable—they weren't fighting the men that had murdered their families, they were becoming them.
