Umair Adeem’s screenplay throws us right into the middle of a lot at the start of The Beast, a single-location thriller that also happens never to stop moving. That’s because the setting is in the front seat and the cabin of “The Beast,” which is the moniker given to the tactical vehicle in which the Secret Service transports the President of the United States. Here, the President himself is behind the wheel of a mobile fortress, containing weapons systems and defensive mechanisms and an outer layer of bulletproof framing that will be put to the test during the events of this movie.
Somehow, though, Adeem’s storytelling cuts down even this straightforward plot into an unholy mess of contradictions and contrivances and conveniences that director Renny Harlin (his third movie of the year, by the way, and the worst of three not-so-good ones) is profoundly unable to channel into anything that approaches “entertaining.” These are not thrills—this is chaos. This is not spectacle—it’s commotion.
It begins with a neat-enough idea, though, and returns to that idea a handful of times over its succinct—but still overstretched—99 minutes: that nuclear war has erupted around this vehicle on this night, which has led to an anarchic overthrow of world governments. A voice on the phone constantly regroups to figure out where else it can send the Beast’s passengers, only to update with minutes to arrive that each of those places has fallen or been compromised or destroyed. In theory, this is horrifying, but in practice, it’s just a chance for Harlin, Adeem, and the two actors who share the space and the screen to humiliate themselves with this entire waste of time and energy.
One is Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the President as a man who might and could be affable under any other circumstances, is both determined and resourceful under pressure, and has been haunted by his experiences at war in Vietnam to the degree that his passenger begins to meld with a hallucination of a fallen comrade. The other is Joel Kinnaman as the President’s bodyguard Taft, who is wounded in an opening brawl with a bad guy and spends the rest of the movie bleeding out in the backseat. Technically, there is a third actor, too, but Guy Bernat’s few appearances as the main antagonist are silent, entirely forgettable and ultimately pointless to point out.
That pretty good idea is just a vessel for a stop-and-start barrage of gunfire, explosions and fistfights that erupt around, occur above and happen atop or on the side of the Beast, and thanks to the combination of woozy over-direction by Harlin and the chainsaw-style editing by Alex Rodríguez, the effect is nearly disastrous. There is little rhyme or reason to the geography of these scenes, which is a little bit surprising, if only because one would think a relatively stationary vantage point like the driver seat of a car wouldn’t lead to such confusion. In any case, the film’s action scenes, which make up a majority of both the story and the film, are nonsense on wheels.
At least that matches the plot, which moves at such a fever pitch that one’s only conclusion must be that Harlin wants us not to dig too deeply into the illogic that governs every aspect of this movie. That starts with the nameless and faceless armed cohort attacking the world’s governments, so well-armed that they mow down platoons of soldiers and civilians alike during the President’s scramble to where help always is and then isn’t, yet completely helpless when the movie wants them to be (Jackson’s President incapacitates a shocking number of them in one scene where he probably shouldn’t but does leave the protection of the car). The effect is bleak, of course, but only in a way that browbeats the viewer into numbness as well as the non-stop action pummels them into boredom.
Jackson is a professional and, one supposes, gives The Beast everything of which he is capable under these circumstances. Everything else here, though, is just a hailstorm of fury and nothingness.
Review: * (out of ****)
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