Idris Elba is one of the most popular actors working today. He releases a lot of new films and a lot of blockbusters. He has also been pretty much everybody’s pick for James Bond the last couple of years. Since he is such a prolific actor I thought I would look at some of his work in some original Netflix movies since I am still trying to gauge the quality of Netflix’s own production.
The two movies in question are the new 2021 film “the harder they fall” and the 2015 film “beast of no nation”. My goal is to evaluate the quality of the film, Idris is simply the common theme between the two. The reasons for choosing these two are not deeper than that.
The harder they fall
The harder they fall is a black western. What I mean by this is, it revolves around a somewhat large cast of characters all of which are black. The music playing is also connected to black culture today. This is clearly a political choice and I will not be commenting on the politics. My sole goal is to evaluate the film on its own.
The story is about a boy named Nat Love (played by Jonathan Majors) who at a very young age watches the evil outlaw Rufus Buck (played by our boy Idris Elba) kill his parents. Sometime later Nat is a grown man looking for revenge after Rufus gets out of prison.
There are basically two factions: team good guys and team bad guys.
Team Bad Guys consist of
Idris Elba as Rufus Buck
Lakeith Stanfield as Cherokee Bill
Regina King as Trudy Smith
Team good guys consist of
Jonathan Majors as Nat Love
RJ Cyler as Jim Beckwourth
Danielle Deadwyler as Cuffee
Gathegi as Bill Pickett
Zazie Beetz as Stagecoach Mary
Delroy Lindo as Bass Reeves
You know exactly what is going to happen. The whole film is about the two factions building toward a conflict. In the end, it all culminated in a big shoot ’em up kind of climax. Where everyone is shooting at everyone and everything.
The film sets up a conflict between the two teams. The first one is Nat vs Rufus, Nat wants revenge on Rufus for killing his parents.
The two girls Trudy and Mary are also pitted up against each other. The only real reason for this is that the two women most always fight each other, this is very common in action films. The idea is to have the “evil” woman and the “good” woman (who is also the love interest) fight each other, so they don’t have to fight the men. The reason for this trope is two-folded. Firstly if the love interest beats the bad guy on her own, the main character becomes irrelevant. Thus you can’t have that happen. On the other hand, if the bad guy beats the main girl, she becomes another damsel in distress, a trope even more tiresome. By the way, Mary totally gets captured and is a damsel in distress.
The last conflict is between Beckwourth and Cherokee Bill. Beckwourth is convinced he is the “fastest draw in the west”. However, everyone around him always says that Cherokee Bill is the fastest, and thus they have to have a standoff at some point. If I am to say something nice it would be that I really liked how they resolved this particular conflict. Basically, Bill shoots him before the countdown from 5 is done. This makes him a cheater, but also kind of unlikeable. This little thing is very important, for Bill is kind of cool when he is introduced when he and Trudy break out Rufus on a train. However, after Rufus gets out Bill becomes sidelined and more relevant. He spends the majority of the film is in the background literally picking up after Rufus.
The conflict with the two girls fighting ends in a nice fight with a lot of different weapons being used. Their relationship was very shallow though and I wasn’t really interested in their conflict.
The conflict between Rufus and Nat is also resolved in a strange way.
The ending also shows Idris’s appeal as an actor, he plays with honor and a strong sense of integrity.
The twist, in the end, is still stupid. Basically, Rufus and Nat are brothers and Rufus killed his own father and his new wife as revenge for being a son of a bich when he was a child. The reason Darth Vader is shown to be Luke’s father in the second film is that we then have plenty of time for Luke to come to terms with the fact. If Rufus was shown earlier to be the brother it would have been better and hit harder. In the movie, Rufus is revealed as the brother killed immediately after, and then the movie ends. The impact of the moment falls flat.
Okay, I said I would not talk about politics, but I have to touch upon some things the movie did that I really did not like. At one point they visit a “white town”, where not only are everybody upper class white people but all the buildings are painted white, in contrast to the other towns in the film. The people in this town are also blatant racists and cowards. It is hard for me to understand the film’s message since I am not American or black. But it feels like I am being talked to like, “look at all these white guys”. Maybe I just don’t get the joke, but it took me out of the experience since it is clearly a political statement reflecting more of the world today than that of the film.
The music is also more contemporary and thus brings me out of the experience. Rap music is simply not fitting for a western since I know it does not fit the time period. When you make a period piece, you have to make it as authentic as possible. You could argue the film is “alternative history”, but they say in the beginning that these people really existed and thus they must try and make a historically accurate film.
The bad guys also sit around talking about how bad their childhood was, I do not know why maybe for sympathy points.
The film has a very interesting aesthetic. How appealing you find this black western is up to the individual, for me, it did not quite work. Overall the film seems a little too shallow, the large cast of characters makes it hard to really connect to someone. Also in the ending battle, the main team has a lot of plot armor. It’s the classic problem where the good guys hit everything they shoot at and the bad guys can’t hit anything at all. Very frustrating to look at.
They could have made the film in a way where Rufus and Nat stood in opposite ideological positions from each other. Instead, it is the simplest and dumbest revenge story ever, since we do not really know why Rufus killed his dad before the very end.
The film might be a little too black and white for me (see I can do it too).
Beasts of no nation
First of all, what a title. Beast of no nation is a great title, it packs a lot of punch, sounds cool, and is relevant to the story. The film is about a child forced to become a soldier for a group of NDF (Nativ Defence Forces) doing a civil war in Africa. The film is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and he does a “fine” job here.
The child Agu is played brilliantly by Abraham Attah. It’s rare for a child actor to really stand out. Since the film is about child soldiers going through some less than ideal times fighting a war, the emotional range of the main actor is important. He delivers a great powerful performance.
Idris Elba plays the commander of the NDF. He is fine in the role, he plays the charismatic leader of the NDF well.
As for the film itself. It’s fine, it is by no means a great piece of work. It might be because I am too jaded at this point. It is a movie about soldiers going to war. It has this “war is hell” kind of vibe, but not more than other, better war movies. The movie “come and see” is a much better child going to a war story, which is a somewhat strange subgenre.
There are some great images, an example is when Agu takes drugs and all the grass and plants turn red instead of green. Another example is at a time when Idris and Agu talk to each other and there are burning buildings and smoke in the background.
Ultimately I would say the two films in question are both somewhat decent films, but nothing really special. The harder they fall is a fun shoot ’em up kind of movie with a lot of colorful characters. Beast of no nation is a classic war is hell movie. It has some good things. If any of the movies sound interesting, by all means, go ahead and watch them.