Beast ★★★

FANCY watching Idris Elba fight a lion? I mean, who wouldn’t.

The American action/thriller Beast gives you that and a fair bit more.

Elba plays Dr Nate Samuels, a widowed father of two teenage daughters who is taking them to South Africa where their late mother was born and grew up.

Sharlto Copley plays the manager of a game reserve where the Samuels stay. Martin is an old friend of the family who originally introduced Nate to his wife.

While showing the family around the reserve Martin interacts with a pride of lions that he has known for years and explains how poachers target the local wildlife.

The group visit a village to find a number of people dead and a wild lion on the rampage. The huge beast has gone rogue after its family were killed by poachers and starts to stalk Martin, Nate and the girls.

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur has made several reasonable action/thrillers in the past, such as Everest in 2015, and does a good job of combining the computer generated and human elements to maintain tension.

Much of the film occurs at night and technically it’s one of the best efforts of seen in trying to compensate for how this transitions to many muddy-looking cinema screens.

Usually this type of film is edited for sudden shocks or sustained action sequences but Kormakur uses steadicam, rear perspectives and long takes instead. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Overall Beast is a big and fun night out.