{"id":714137,"date":"2026-06-04T05:50:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T05:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/714137\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T05:50:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T05:50:14","slug":"beast-australias-first-mma-film-starring-russell-crowe-is-cheesy-yet-oddly-comforting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/714137\/","title":{"rendered":"Beast: Australia\u2019s first MMA film, starring Russell Crowe, is cheesy yet oddly comforting"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a nation obsessed with professional sport, there is a surprising dearth of Aussie sports films. There have been, of course, a handful of memorable ones: The Club (1980), The Coolangatta Gold (1984) and, more recently, The Final Winter (2007).<\/p>\n

But apart from the low-budget 2024 film Life After Fighting \u2013 understandable if you haven\u2019t heard of it, it made less than A$6,000<\/a> at the box office \u2013 Beast is the first Australian film to be set in the world of mixed martial arts. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Patton James (Daniel MacPherson) is a retired fighter pulled back into the game due to tough circumstances. His young daughter Maddie (Sol Nc Carrico) needs to see an expensive specialist, his wife Luciana (Kelly Gale) is pregnant with another, and he barely makes a living working for a petty tyrant on a fishing boat. <\/p>\n

When the opportunity to earn $150,000 fighting his former nemesis, world champion Xavier Grau (Bren Foster), arises, he finds it impossible to resist, despite the imprecations of his loving wife.<\/p>\n

So Patton returns to his old trainer Sammy (Russell Crowe). And despite some bad blood between them, Sammy and his daughter Rose (Amy Shark, in her feature film debut<\/a>) end up helping him get in shape for the fight. <\/p>\n

After several trials and tribulations, the whole thing culminates in a bout in Thailand. \u201cA fight all about redemption, no\u2026 revenge\u201d, the commentator tells us. Guess the result?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Singer-songwriter Amy Shark plays Sammy\u2019s (Crowe) daughter Rose, in her feature film debut.
\n Stan<\/p>\n

Bland delivery, bad accents<\/p>\n

Beast has all the expected cliches, and to say the narrative is predictable is an understatement. <\/p>\n

But for a feel good \u201cagainst the odds\u201d sports film, this isn\u2019t necessarily a problem. There can be something pleasurable in watching clich\u00e9 after clich\u00e9 unfold, and genre cinema\u2019s capacity to fulfil our expectations is one of the reasons<\/a> we keep coming back to it.<\/p>\n

But the problem is, Beast for the most part rings as hollow as the character\u2019s names, which could only exist in a scriptwriter\u2019s dreams \u2013 Patton James and Xavier Grau\u2026 come on.<\/p>\n

Director Tyler Atkins found something charming and fresh in his undeniably sentimental earlier film, Bosch & Rockit (2022). Beast, however, feels stale.
\nMuch of this is technical, with many of the elements not really working (or not working well together). <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Much of the films technical elements don\u2019t really work together.
\n Stan<\/p>\n

Russell Crowe is a fine actor, and his revival as an angry, hefty middle-aged chap (as in the smashing 2020 film Unhinged) has been effective. But one can\u2019t imagine this role would have stretched him much, and it feels like he\u2019s just going through the motions.<\/p>\n

Similarly, we\u2019re consistently aware of the effort TV star MacPherson is putting into the lead role of Patton, and this makes for a valiant but not entirely convincing performance. <\/p>\n

Kelly Gale acts like a model as Patton\u2019s long-suffering wife, her undeniable presence offset by a strikingly monotone delivery. <\/p>\n

The only standouts are screen veterans Matt Nable, excellent as usual in a tiny role as loan shark Barry Dunne, and Nathan Phillips, who has a small but memorable role as the skipper of the fishing boat, and Bren Foster, a martial artist-turned actor who commands every scene in which he appears. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bren Foster commands every scene he appears in.
\n Stan<\/p>\n

The whole thing plays like Australian television rather than cinema. It\u2019s like a 1940s melodrama with none of the style or mood \u2013 blandly lit with rudimentary cinematography, accompanied by a stock standard orchestral score, matching unconvincing American accents from some of the key actors (Luke Hemsworth\u2019s accent as sleazy promoter Gabriel Stone perhaps explains why his career hasn\u2019t been that of his brothers Chris or Liam). <\/p>\n

At once unconvicing and strangely comforting<\/p>\n

The screenplay is dull, co-written by Crowe, who also produced the film. It seems so concerned with coming across as an \u201cAussie film full of heart\u201d, it ends up without any.<\/p>\n

There are some unintentionally funny lines, such as what wise trainer Sammy says to Patton when he hears he\u2019s taken the fight just for the money: <\/p>\n

Time\u2019s not a commodity like that. You\u2019ve got moments and memories. If you don\u2019t take the moments, you don\u2019t get the memories.<\/p>\n

That said, despite being soapy and not very convincing, Beast is quite watchable as a kind of sports telemovie \u2013 earnest, if a bit lame. Sure, it runs through the motions, but the motions are compelling enough to warrant a watch for fans of Aussie cheese.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something eternally pleasurable about watching an against the odds sporting movie replete with training montages, even if it is Home and Away\u2019s answer to Rocky IV. <\/p>\n

Beast is showing on Stan from today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a nation obsessed with professional sport, there is a surprising dearth of Aussie sports films. There have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-714137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}