Beast review: Aussie MMA drama lands a solid punch

In competitive fighting’s biggest bouts, no-one enters the ring without an announcer loudly heralding their presence. As Beast joins the hordes of sports-focused action dramas where packing a punch, and landing one, is the noblest deed there is, this new Australian film makes those declarations itself.

Beast might be a mixed-martial arts movie rather than a boxing film, but it loves and embraces the latter’s long-established tropes.

Sometimes those proclamations are verbal, and also thoroughly unnecessary. Before the feature’s climactic fray, revenge and redemption earn a mention, for instance, as if viewers aren’t already keenly aware that this is a flick partly about vengeance and vindication.

Mainly, though, director Tyler Atkins, screenwriter David Frigerio and co-scribe and co-star Russell Crowe realise that they don’t need to literally call out every time the film abides by the boxing-movie playbook.

As it follows a former contender-turned-scrappy underdog’s return to the octagon – complete with family woes to brawl for, a villainous adversary to vanquish and a veteran mentor, played by Crowe, in the protagonist’s corner – Beast’s affection for formula is as glaring as a fresh shiner.

Expected but engaging

Beast is Atkins’ second feature, after 2022’s thoughtful father-son tale Bosch & Rockit. That it starts with a pep talk also sums up Beast’s approach.

As Patton James (Daniel MacPherson, Land of Bad) prepares to face the undefeated Xavier Grau (Bren Foster, Last King of the Cross) when his own career seems on the upswing, Sammy (Crowe, Nuremberg) reminds him of the basics. For this MMA trainer, breathing means thinking and thinking means winning – a mantra that’s clearly been drummed into his protege over a lengthy stretch, to the point that it should now be second nature.

Reteaming after 2024’s Land of Bad, which Frigerio co-penned and Crowe starred in, Beast’s writers have had the conventions that they’re eagerly adopting drilled into them, too. Crowe is a veteran of boxing pictures after all, thanks to Cinderella Man. His Academy Award-winning stint as Maximus in Gladiator surely came in handy as well.

A movie can unfurl exactly as expected, blow by blow, and as countless others have before it, while still proving firmly solid, however. Fond of a cliche but remaining crowd-pleasing, and predictably plotted but largely powerfully performed also, that’s Beast.

Daniel MacPherson’s transformation

Well-oiled is another word that springs to mind with Beast. Much about it is workmanlike, suiting a film where industrial sites from Port Kembla frequently fill the screen.

Several of the movie’s key parties hail from Land of Bad – not just Crowe and Frigerio but also MacPherson, Luke Hemsworth and former rugby league player George Burgess – and fit back together again mostly seamlessly.

Beast’s narrative unfolds just as smoothly. After Patton enters the octagon post-Sammy’s opening speech, Beast finds him manning Wollongong fishing trawlers a decade later. Although the bout went well, his life hasn’t always since.

Now, the week’s catch dictates his wages, and also for his colleague Neal (Burgess, The Weight), but even then a paycheck isn’t guaranteed. Of course the story lobs a potential MMA comeback into his path, plus an array of other reasons to both complicate and justify it.

Worlds away from his days starring in Neighbours and then hosting Dancing with the Stars, MacPherson’s impressive physical transformation visibly demonstrates his commitment to fleshing out Patton. Against real-life martial artist Foster, he more than holds his own.

More than looking the part and nailing the requisite MMA choreography, MacPherson brings conflict and vulnerability to an everyman who fights to protect everyone but himself, and who knows what’s at stake but also relishes how getting into the octagon makes him feel.

Watch the trailer

Supporting highlights

Patton is equally aware that if he just does what he’s best at, solving his money woes should be simple – and also that little in his life reliably is.

With his daughter needing access to a medical specialist, he has more incentive than ever, except that he has promised his wife Luciana (Kelly Gale, Detective Hole) that he’s finished with the sport. She might be the only one who even somewhat believes that he’ll honour that vow. No-one watching shares the faith, understandably and rightly so.

When Patton’s younger brother Malon (Mojean Aria, The Correspondent), a fellow fighter, is knocked out by Grau and can’t square his debts, Grau’s sleazy manager Gabriel (Hemsworth, Deadloch) is also certain that he can entice the only man who’s beaten his client to make a highly lucrative return for a grudge match.

For Patton to get fighting fit again, cue a trip back to Sammy’s gym, which his daughter Rose (musician Amy Shark, making her acting debut) now runs.

Among MacPherson’s co-stars, Crowe, Gale, Shark and Burgess fare far better than Hemsworth and Aria. Beast’s supporting players fall into two camps. All in stock roles, they either infuse depth into their easy-to-categorise characters or veer into cartoonishness.

That Crowe excels in gruff-but-sage mode is another of the feature’s expected turns. That Gale’s sensitive portrayal ensures that Luciana avoids playing like Saturday Night Live’s ‘Every Boxer’s Girlfriend From Every Movie About Boxing Ever’ parody is a welcome development.

An Aussie take that lands

Every sport, combative or not, is about timing. Every comeback journey is as well.

Atkins, the Season 1 winner of The Amazing Race Australia before becoming a filmmaker, brings swiftness to a movie that could’ve dragged and flagged as it ticks off every foreseeable plot point across almost two hours, while also carving out room for virtually the entire ensemble to enjoy a memorable scene.

Beast’s sense of pace is less consistent in its fight sequences, surprisingly, which bob and weave between kinetic and needlessly slowed down. That said, Atkins, with cinematographer Thomaz Labanca (ABBA & Elvis in the Outback) and editor Todd E Miller (another Land of Bad alum) are merely towing the genre line.

When men are doing the pummelling, every sports flick usually proclaims its two cents about masculinity, too, and Beast is no different. There’s nothing unique about recognising how societal pressures shape the idea of what makes a good man, and can also limit it, but this is a sturdy Aussie take nonetheless.

Beast is in cinemas 23 April.

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