Beast review: A fight movie missing its punch

The new Australian sports drama Beast combines two sub-genres I’m typically a sucker for: “one last fight for revenge” actioner, and the “brother sticking up for his little sibling” drama. Unfortunately, despite a strong leading performance from Daniel MacPherson, Beast falls short because it neglects to include the essential building blocks of those sub-genres, instead hoping you’ll fill them in for yourself.

In Beast, retired former MMA champion “General” Patton James (MacPherson, Strike Back) returns to the fight game after more than a decade away. He’s coming back for two reasons: 1) he’s broke and needs to pay for his daughter’s medical care, and 2) he wants revenge for his brother Malon (Mojean Aria, See), who was recently put in the hospital by Patton’s old Ocatgon rival Xavier Grau (Bren Foster, Mexicali).

This should be an easy sell for me – there are so many movies with nearly identical plot structures that I love. But Beast fails to depict the sibling relationship in a way that creates any sympathy, in large part because of how obnoxious Malon is. He looks and acts like central casting for “guy you want to see punched in the face” – he dyes his hair bright pink, wears a mouth guard in the cage that says “Fuck you,” and is generally an ungrateful little shit who acts like a punk to every single person in his life. Malon is supposed to be the emotional fulcrum of the movie, the reason Patton fights, but every moment with him feels like nails on a chalkboard. 

MacPherson brings a lot to the movie as Patton, convincingly selling him as earnest, tired, out of work and out of shape, and his friendship with Neal, a giant man (played by former rugby pro George Burgess) he meets while working on a fishing boat is one of the highlights of the movie. Their relationship lands more convincingly than Patton’s with his own brother, which is not ideal for the narrative. Crowe fits as MacPherson’s former trainer Sammy, but “Russell Crowe as a grouchy guy” is playing with house money. Unfortunately, Patton’s relationship with his wife Luciana (Kelly Gale, Plane) is also paper-thin and another drag on the movie. It’s a thankless part – wife who doesn’t want the protagonist to be in this movie – and unfortunately, Gale isn't able to do much with it. I didn't believe any of her line readings, and I was often surprised by the line-to-line whiplash of what emotion she was supposed to be conveying.

Patton promised Luciana that he’d quit fighting for good after he got out of prison. Yes, Patton went to prison after his last fight, a note the movie only barely touches on. Apparently he got into a barroom brawl, and the incident – and his lack of contact after – permanently damaged the relationship he had with trainer Sammy (Crowe). Strangely, that’s all we hear or see about this bar room brawl or Patton’s apparently fight-filled time behind bars. It’s a staple for fight movies like these to have a tragic, violent backstory, and I kept waiting for the reveal that Patton was sticking up for someone in the bar, or any details at all about what happened. In addition to adding meaningful character beats, a scene like that is a nice excuse to throw in an additional fight sequence in a movie that frankly does not have that many of them – and one in a fresh, different environment. Instead, it’s just left as plot filler to quickly explain why Patton left the sport.

Beast’s fights were choreographed by Bren Foster (who plays antagonist Xavier Grau), an outstanding Australian martial artist and fight choreographer who was the main reason I was excited for this movie. Foster, one of the most impressive athletes working in action today, looks great in the movie (his frosted tips are a great villainous touch), and a lot of the choreography plays to the actors’ physical strengths while feeling like credible MMA bouts. Unfortunately, director Tyler Atkins (a former surfer who is also the winner of Amazing Race Australia 1) leans heavily on close-up shots that obscure the action, taking away from the euphoric experience of watching Foster spin, kick, and jump his way around an opponent.

The tactical matchup between protagonist and opponent is a staple for the fight movie genre. What are the protagonist’s strengths in the fight? What are the opponent’s? What needs to be done in training and in the fight to win? It’s important to clearly establish these and connect them, showing how the protagonist’s training helped them in the fight. Beast has some fun training montage moments – like when Patton uses the 350-pound Neal for practicing takedowns – but there’s no real effort made to connect these moments to the moments in the cage, and we get very little information on the differences between Patton and Xavier as fighters. It’s a shocking absence for a genre that thrives on visual and narrative connections, and makes the movie feel disconnected from itself.

It’s not really clear to me who Beast is for at the end of the day. MMA fans and fighting movie fans will come away disappointed with how little fighting there is, and how much of the movie disconnects with the reality of the sport (a late, unremarked-upon decision by the fight sanctioning body is one of the most bizarre narrative choices I’ve seen in years). People who don’t have a fondness for MMA or fighting movies will have very little to cling to otherwise, because of how obnoxious the brother character is and how thinly sketched the wife character is. At nearly two hours, it’s significantly longer than other movies in its sub-genres, and with no compelling reason to stretch it out. The writing is sloppy, the fights are sparse and have their own narrative issues, and the characters are poorly shaped to the point of being complete question marks. Beast has its moments, but it’s a rare miss in a sub-genre that, for me at least, has a relatively low bar to land a strong blow.