The African child soldier and the rebel commander

Daniel Nelson

Beasts Of No Nation has sparked controversy, not for its subject  – it’s an action movie about a child caught up in an African war and his relationship with his swaggering

Beasts Of No Nation

Image by Beasts Of No Nation

It’s a Netflix film, its first, and it will be available to Netflix customers at the same time as it is launched in cinemas.

Four US cinema chains said they wouldn’t screen it, because home viewing availability would undercut their business.

But 51 years ago Bob Dylan warned that the times they are a changin’, and today they a changin’ even more. So maybe simultaneous home-cinema release is here to stay.

If you can choose, however, go for the big screen, big sound version because it delivers a lot of bangs for your bucks.

The war story is topped and tailed by shots of Agu’s pre-rampage family life and post-fighting rehabilitation. Occasionally his thoughts are disclosed in a voiceover, an odd device in such a film but one which enables his humanity to be maintained even as he is forced to do unspeakable things to enemies and friends.

It’s set in an imaginary country, but could easily be Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo or Joseph Kony’s rebel s in Uganda or Boko Haram’s Nigeria. It’s exciting but too long because director Cary Fukanaga wants to show us the whole arc of action, from ragtag militia to a victorious band marching on the capital – defeated finally not by an opposition army but by realpolitik as the Supreme Leader begins to think less about local action and more about international niceties.

Fukanaga pulls off the trick of showing the brutality of war but providing a humanitarian film, and despite terrific battle scenes it’s the characters of the commander and the boy (Abraham Attah) that holds the attention. You really want to know what happens to them.

·         Beasts of No Nation is released in cinemas and on Netflix on 16 October