Ever since Rocky people have been trying to recapture the magic that was Sly Stallone making a movie that honestly, wasn't a great script but for whatever reason the people at the time were very ready for a saga of that sort.
There isn't really much there: A guy who is down on his luck a bit and society doesn't really think is capable of much in the way of anything defies all odds and wins a championship in boxing and makes some great friends along the way! (sarcasm.)
Beast is essentially Rocky, or at least that is what it is trying to be.
This film lifts a lot from Rocky and I'm not really going to get down on it for that. A film about competitive fighting needs to be a bit of an underdog story, or as was the case with later Rocky films, a story of revenge. This one is both of those things but also is a very long advertisement for ONE Fighting Championship and I would imagine that they foot a lot of the bill for this "beast" of a film.
They really try to sell you on the fact that Russell Crowe is in this film, I've even seen some advertisements / posters that have him be the only person on the poster. It's a shame that he isn't a great deal of this film and the scenes that he actually is in appear as though they were filmed at a different location than where the other actors happen to be.
They also try to sell this on Luke Hemsworth, whose name you probably know but not because of anything that he has done but moreso, his family members.
Then we have to get to the other actors in this film. I don't know if they were just doling out favors to family members or the leading lady because she is super hot, but these people cannot act. This is where the film becomes unintentionally hilarious. There are a ton of performances by people in this film that would likely get cut from B-movies in editing, but in this movie, for some reason, they kept it in.
Kelly Gale is a Swedish/Australian model first, "actress" second and I sincerely hope the modeling part of her life ends up working out for her because the acting isn't going to. She is well-known for her work with Victoria's Secret, Playboy, and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition so yeah, she's probably doing ok.
She isn't even the worst actor / actress in this either. I get that it can be tough to find people that can do martial arts on screen as well as act, but apparently Beast didn't have the money to find people that can do both.
The fighting choreography is sound and I am sure that it really pained the director that it was absolutely necessary to give these guys a few lines. You can see in certain parts of the film where the scene was cut short even though there is obviously some incoming dialogue and a few sections where the talking was completely overdubbed and the back of the other fighter is shown. Maybe they planned on this being the case.
Hilarity from these wonderful little accidents aside, this film just isn't very good. It opens strong and gives you the impression that our hero Patton is going to put on a good show but then inexplicably (and it really isn't explained) he stops fighting and we are shown "10 years later" and he is broke and working on a fishing boat for very little money. I'm not saying that a lot of professional fighters don't lose all their money but come on now - surely the was something else he could have done.
The revenge arc is obvious and when it does finally come together the entire cast has been arguing about it for so long you just want them to get on with it because it is the obvious conclusion to this disaster of a film.
They have carefully guarded how much they spent on this thing but it is public record that the global box office take was a mere $1.8 million. I would imagine that Russel Crowe alone required more payment that this to be in it so suffice to say this film is a serious flop. Lionsgate! What were you thinking?
Some of the fight footage was entertaining to a degree but although I don't know very much about fighting I seriously doubt anyone earth is capable of enduring this much damage and living to tell about it. Perhaps that was an homage to Rocky as well because those guys endured dozens of unchecked super-punches to the face also.
Should I watch it?
If you can put your remote firmly in your hand to skip all the painstakingly boring (and obvious) acting portions of this film then perhaps, just for a little while. There is some decent action but the main reason to watch this is to see how awful a large budget film distributed by major film corporations actually can be. I am genuinely surprised that they bothered to finish this one because it had to have been evident pretty early on that this was going to be absolute garbage.
Have we reached the point in Crowe's career where he is just going to DeNiro or Bruce Willis himself to anyone that will give him a paycheck? It's starting to look that way.
