Child. Captive. Killer.

Rating: 10/10 (26 January 2016)

With a poll being held on IMDb's Classic Film board for the best titles of 2015,I started to search round for movies to view from the year.Reading a number of posts on the board,I noticed a fellow IMDber mention that Netflix first film production was by the director of True Detective's first season,which led to me getting ready to visit the no nation.
The plot:
Learning that an unfolding civil war is about to reach their "buffer zone" town,Agu's dad pays traffickers to take his wife and two youngest children as far away from the place as possible.Getting surrounded by the war lords,Agu's family tell him to run away as they are ruthlessly murdered.Running for his life,Agu ends up crossing paths with a gang of adult and child soldiers led by a Commandant.Seeing a soldier in Agu,the Commandant and soldiers begin to destroy Agu's childhood.
View on the film:
Filmed in 35 days on location in Ghana,cinematographer/writer/director Cary Joji Fukunaga gives the battle scenes an eerie ,haunted atmosphere,as the vast miles of jungle are clouded in a stench of death.Taking care to not draw attention away from the unfolding events, composer Dan Romer delivers a delicate,jagged score which brings out the ghostly mood underlying the battle scenes.
Keeping close to Agu, Fukunaga allows the viewer to experience everything that Agu is facing by brilliantly keeping the camera at Agu's height,which gives the looking-down warlords an intimidating appearance,and also makes Agu look like a small spec against the unfolding chaos.Following every attack that the war lords make, Fukunaga uses complex,brilliantly stylised tracking shots to place the audience in the middle of the shattered society,as the camera flows from prisoners being killed,to the child soldiers destroying a family home.
Working with former child soldiers and ex-mercenaries of the Sierra Leone and Liberian Civil War, Fukunaga displays the violence with an unflinching eye,as harrowing scenes featuring beheadings and point blank shootings land with a horrific force.For the spilling of blood in the film, Fukunaga makes sure that the violence never becomes excessive,with each act of violence committed by the mercenaries taking away the humanity left in Agu and the other child soldiers.
Spending 7 years researching the Sierra Leone Civil War, Fukunaga adaptation of Uzodinma Iweala's novel superbly captures the fractured personalities of the soldiers and the civilians,thanks to each brittle exchange lingering on the edge of a inhumane act taking place without a moments notice.Focusing on Agu, Fukunaga lingers on Agu's routine family life for the opening beats,which leads to the later unrelenting destruction of Abu's childhood innocence being expressed with a swift intensity.
Swaggering across the screen, Idris Elba gives a chilling performance as a war lord Commandant,whose face offers no hint of remorse,and Elba injecting his Commandant with the belief that his goal is on the horizon.Making his debut, Abraham Attah gives an incredible performance as Agu,thanks to Attah getting under the skin of Agu's loss of childhood and also gradually opening up Agu's complicated relationship with the Commandant,as they find themselves in a nation with no beasts.