Good Enough at First, but Super Slow at the End

Rating: 4/10 (4 February 2016)

I went into this movie with some hopes. Child soldiers are kind of interesting to me. While I (of course) don't support it, I think that the idea could make some great movies. Unfortunately, this isn't one of them.
Beasts of No Nation has a super average plot. Boy is separated from family and joins the army in a war that's been happening for a while. Nothing new here other than the fact that it's child soldiers, which really doesn't change a lot. Without the child soldiers it probably would have been the exact same movie, so it kind of feels like they were put in just as a way to 'bait' people into liking it. It kind of felt like it was saying "If you don't like this movie then you support child soldiers which makes you a horrible person". I almost always feel this way about a lot of these kinds of movies, but I think that this movie in particular had that scenario. Unfortunately for Netflix, I'm not impressed by the feeling of obligation over quality.
Everything else about the movie is pretty average. The characters aren't really all that good, the movie as a whole is very predictable, and not once was I surprised about a single thing about it.
I was a little irritated though that I couldn't understand a word anyone said, so I had to turn on English subtitles while they were speaking English. I know that it's part of the movie that not everyone speaks particularly good English, but it was just a little frustrating. If they'd been speaking in another language for the whole movie I could have cared less, but in this case it was just a little annoying how inaudible everyone's voice was.
The movie really isn't paced too well. The first hour isn't too bad. It's just predictable is all. But the last hour dragged on forever. I found myself relatively frequently checking how much time was left. Even when there were only 25 minutes left I felt like that would be too long to wait.
Overall Beasts of No Nation isn't anything special. Everything about the movie is extremely predictable, and the last half of the movie is extremely slow, which makes it more of a below average movie. While I still enjoyed the movie for the most part, it just wasn't done well at all, and ended up coming off as baiting people to feel obligated to like it. Thinking about it now, it's even more obvious than I originally thought. In the end, I can see why someone would like it nonetheless, but it really just wasn't for me. If your curious then give it a watch. If not, then it's probably not worth your time.