Beasts of No Nation (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2015)

In an unspecified African country, a civil war leaves a young boy fleeing the summary execution of all the men in his family and into the arms of a rebel commander with a entourage of child soldiers. He is duly cultishly indoctrinated to become one of them, forced to kill and dehumanised in the process.
The little army is as garishly attired as a circus troupe, which does help to differentiate the characters from each other, and behaves like a fully psychotic version of the boys of Lord of the Flies, with guns and fanaticism. Idris Elba as the Commandant is a sociopathic demagogue one minute, a child molester the next and yet overall a kindly avuncular presence. His performance makes it easy to see how the orphaned boys would latch onto him. Of course, we have been here before, notably with 2008's Johnny Mad Dog, but here Elba's presence allows for a political subtext in addition to the carnage and unlike in the earlier film, there is still the prospect of light at the end of the tunnel too. It's a mature work all in all.

7/10