Samuel L. Jackson plays the motherf**king president of the United States of Goddamn America in The Beast, a balls-to-the-wall action movie that puts our man in the driver’s seat of his decked out, bulletproof limo amidst a massive militaristic coup. The less you think about the plot and the more you focus on this Angel Has Fallen-meets-Speed amalgamation the better.
Renny Harlin, who used to make cool movies but hasn’t really served up anything good or memorable since 1999’s Deep Blue Sea, drops us straight into the action–literally. There’s no set up. No attack sequence. Just SLJ driving while his trusted Secret Service agent (Joel Kinnaman) attempts to fend off baddies from the back seat.
Frankly, it’s not a great start, as the initial “oh fuck” scenes usually are the best parts of these kinds of movies. But once you adjust to the pace of the movie–which is downright relentless 95% of the time–there’s a lot to like about The Beast. Taking place almost exclusively within the limo, Harlin nonetheless establishes a solid sense of scale of the attack, with all kinds of explosions, gunfights, and terror assaulting the protagonists from the left, right, and center. It’s a single-location film but with a moving target, which establishes an energetic baseline that is undeniably fun.
Where The Beast falters is that its bad guys remain almost entirely faceless. They are blurred shadows, mindless henchmen with guns, and not much else. Part of the chaos involves SLJ attempting to figure out who is responsible for the attack, but Harlan and screenwriter Umair Aleem make a mistake by opting to obfuscate the answer. We don’t need a detailed back story, but something to latch onto would have helped. In short, who are we supposed to hate?
Despite its shortcomings, The Beast is a solid action film that leans into its strengths—nonstop suspense, a badass concept, and Samuel L Jackson playing the President. If that combination of elements sounds appealing to you, The Beast is your jam.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.
