Idris Elba’s warlord is a delicate balance
Idris Elba oozes charisma, as a dude hanging outside a hotel for an interview but also onscreen as a West African warlord.
Even when his Commandant is doing bad things in Netflix’s debut original movie, Beasts of No
Nation (in select theaters and available for streaming Oct. 16), the British actor offers a healthy dose of charm as well as a balance of humanity and villainy.
To engage child soldiers like young Agu (Abraham Attah) after a civil war separates him from his family in the movie — which had its North American premiere Sunday at Toronto International Film Festival — Elba thought he needed some human spirit.
“The themes in this film — family and loyalty — are massive,” he says. “Commandant, as evil and as misplaced as his purpose is, did become a surrogate father for a bunch of people who had nothing.”
The character has a speech telling these kids that under his watch, they “now have a voice.”
“You live in a farm or a hut and your town has been ripped apart and you’ve got nothing. Where are you going to go?” Elba says. “You go to an army that feeds you, that stands up for something, where there’s a sense of pride. As sick and horrible as that is, it’s a reality for these kids.”
While this isn’t a “message film,” Elba does see it as a way to use his global celebrity to bring to light a harsh truth.
“Nobody would see this film probably if it was put into a festival and given some sort of theatrical release,” he says. “Now that we’re on a platform like Netflix, a lot of people are going to digest this movie in their own way and they’re going to learn a little lesson about what’s really going on.”
A PERFECT ‘TRUMBO’ FOIL
One of the most Hollywood of the films on display this year in Toronto is Trumbo, director Jay Roach’s biopic of blacklisted 1940s screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (played by Bryan Cranston).
Trumbo’s most vocal antagonist in the movie is Hedda Hopper, a former film starlet who transitioned to Hollywood gossip columnist and took Trumbo and the rest of the blacklisted writers and directors dubbed “the Hollywood 10” to task for their Communist leanings. Roach thought Helen Mirren was perfect to not only rock ostentatious hats with feathery plumage but also portray the complexities of a woman with a single-minded zeal to achieve her ends.
“To cast somebody who is that zealous, the risk would be becoming like a cartoon villain,” Roach says. “When you’re casting that kind of character, you want the most incredible actor playing her. So when the idea of Helen Mirren came up, of course we were like, ‘Oh, my God.’ ”