Beast of No Nation

I watched this 2015 movie because the name is from a great album by Nigerian father of afrobeat Fela Kuti and I am also a fan of Idris Elba after watching HBO's The Wire.

The movie is shot in a documentary style and follows the life of a young boy named Agu in an unspecified African country. At the beginning Agu is a typical boy - he goes to church and plays soccer and likes playing make-believe with his friends. At the same time there is the darker side that comes from a life of poverty where him and other boys try to get money by blocking the road and asking a car from money to let it go on. But all in all he's basically a good kid.

The town gets word that it may soon be in danger of being attacked and the people are told by peacekeepers that they should evacuate. However pride gets in the way and most at first want to stay right where they are and protect what is theirs. By the time they realize their mistake it's really too late and not much can be done but to try and get some of the women and children out. Agu's mom gets out but he does not.

Shortly after the town is attacked and it's a bloodbath. Agu his family and a few others hide but are found and captured. A women in town who disapproved of the hoodlum antics of Agu and his friends reports the group of survivors to the soldiers as enemy fighters, thereby ensuring their deaths.

When the execution shots begin raining down on his family and friends, Agu runs and somehow (in an unbelievable but forgivable story line) isn't shot, escaping into the jungle. Now all alone in the forest, who should he run into but the rebels who are fighting the army that he escaped from, led by Idris Elba's character.

Through a long and well-planned indoctrination program he is slowly transformed into a soldier who is ready and willing to die. Teaching him to kill is a little harder. It is a lesson that culminates with him being persuaded to brutally murder a defenseless man who has done nothing wrong. But when Agu is told over and over this man is responsible for the death of his family, he finds it in his heart to make that first kill.

His path in life quickly becomes more violent from this point forward. Now Agu crosses a line. He becomes the monster marching into villages killing every man, women and child for no real reason. The brutal irony of him becoming the exact monster he became a soldier to fight is completely lost on him. As the story continues it turns out his commander's real motivation was greed and not the noble ideas of opposing the evil enemy forces that he had sold his boy soldiers on.

He convinces the boys to abandon their cause and instead fight for profits. However, stripped of their ideals the child soldiers soon lose their wills to go on in this way. Hungry and tired, they decide to surrender to the UN. It's a sad and hopeless story, and there is nothing uplifting about it really, though it paints a vivid picture of how someone can turn into the monster they hate.