Agu the Child Soldier

Rating: 9/10 (20 March 2017)

The Netflix movie, Beast of No Nation, directed by Cary Fukunaga, is about a young West African boy named Agu. The specific setting is unknown, but it is somewhere in Africa. Agu lives in a village that is protected by Nigerian soldiers. Since it is a buffer zone, many things are run down, so there is no schooling. The families inside are suppose to be safe, however the village gets ambushed by rebels. Unfortunately, Agu's father and brother are executed by the rebels. Agu manages to escape into the forest just to be captured by another rebel group. He will later be brainwashed and become a child soldier for the Native Defense Forces, NDF. The director's background includes a couple of movies and a TV show. He is definitely qualified for motion picture production since he has won a Primetime Emmy along with 25 wins and 22 nominations. The budget he had to make this movie was 6 million dollars. This movie's settings were realistic because it was shot in Ghana. SInce there was not many special effects needed for this film, viewers got a great visual for how these West Africans lived and what they went through. Although the places the movie takes place are beautiful, the conditions many of the people lived in are horrible. The village Agu was in at the beginning of the movie was rundown and dirty with lots of garbage around. On the outskirts, refugees would surround the village pleading their way to get in. There was not a lot of money to be made inside the village, so the kids made a buck where they could. For example, Agu took apart the shell of the TV in order to try and sell to someone in the village. Another way Agu and his brother made a few dollars was by purposely blocking the roadway and making people pay to get by. These two examples show how rough it was for kids to be living in this village because there is simply no schooling and money. One of the camps that the commandant and the others started for themselves was extremely unhealthy. One of the promises of the commandant was to give the kids better than what they had. Instead the kids were left digging trenches and cleansing themselves with muddy water. The living condition was not the worst thing for the boys though. It was the fact that they were child soldiers brainwashed to fight and kill who they were told. The movie does a great job with these scenes, especially with the acting from the kids. Agu definitely did a great job persuading the audience that he went through a mental change from the commandant. After the brainwashing, Agu's attitude toward everything changed. He turned into a soldier. One example of is true change was when he killed an innocent man. This shows how he was manipulated into thinking he was doing the right thing, but in reality he was turning into the type of person that killed his father and brother. Since this movie is not strictly based off of a true event, rather based on general true information, it is hard to know what the purpose of the film really is. One way to look at why it was made is how it portrays the brutality children went through during these war times in African places. Also, there really is not any factual or historical errors in this film. This is because there is no answer to base the movie off of. This movie was produced by Netflix, a company famously known in the United States. This can show who the movie movie was made for. It was made for the audience of the United States because that is the audience it is mostly targeting. Overall, the movies overall filmmaking and performance of the actors was top notch. The sequence from the beginning to the end was very clear and fluent. The acting from the commandant was excellent. This is because he plays the strong leader during a war while being able to be somewhat of a "father figure" to the kids. For a child, Agu's actor did a great job narrating and acting out the different emotions of his character from when he was with his family to when he was a soldier. In conclusion, this is a great movie to have have open ideas as to what is the true events it is based off of because there is no backstory to it.