The Beast (1988)

DIRECTOR: Kevin Reynolds

CAST: Jason Patric, George Dzundza, Steven Bauer, Stephen Baldwin, Don Harvey, Erick Avari, Kabir Bedi, Chaim Jeraffi

REVIEW:

From action director Kevin Reynolds and screenwriter William Mastrosimone, who adapted the script from his play Nanawatai (an honor code among ethnic Afghans requiring hospitality for any who request it, even an enemy), comes this underrated gritty war drama that sets a small-scale interpersonal conflict against the historical backdrop of a seldom cinematically-explored war (the 1979-1989 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan). The Beast is a lesser-known entry in the war genre; despite a fairly small budget of $8 million, the movie still had a very weak box office performance, making back only $161,000, but for fans of grittier, more character-based war dramas, The Beast is sufficiently well-made to be worth giving a chance.

The setting is 1981, in the third year of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, pitting superior Soviet military strength against comparatively primitive but fierce resistance from Mujahadeen rebels. The movie opens with a bang—literally—as a Soviet tank column razes an Afghan village to the ground in retaliation for its support of the Mujahadeen, but in the aftermath, one tank becomes separated from its comrades and lost in the Afghan desert. This tank is commanded by Daskal (George Dzundza), a grizzled battle-hardened hard-ass with a questionable grip on sanity. Daskal commands the sycophantic Kaminski (Don Harvey) and Golikov (Stephen Baldwin), accompanying Afghan collaborator Samad (Erick Avari), whom Daskal holds in deep suspicion, and the thoughtful, philosophical driver Konstantin Koverchenko (Jason Patric), who has a record of insubordination. Tension simmers between Daskal and Konstantin from the get-go, especially after Daskal forces him to brutally execute a captured rebel by crushing him beneath the treads of his tank. Meanwhile, as the tank wanders lost in the desert trying to find its way home, it is pursued by a vengeful band of Mujahadeen led by young warrior Taj (Steven Bauer), who has seen the title of Khan abruptly fallen to him after the killings of his father and brother by the Soviets and is accompanied by his uncle and mentor Akbar (Kabir Bedi) and joined by his opportunistic cousin Moustafa (Chaim Jeraffi). And the plot thickens when an even more egregious war crime on Daskal’s part leads the tension between he and Konstantin to boil over, leading to Konstantin left for dead and found by the Mujahadeen, with whom he forms an unlikely alliance against his former commander.

Perhaps partly because it’s set during a war which the United States did not have a fighting role in (though it did heavily fund the arming and training of the anti-Soviet Mujahadeen rebels), The Beast isn’t concerned with any kind of flag-waving. The Soviets and the Mujahadeen are both painted in shades of gray, everyone’s motives and allegiances aren’t clear-cut, and there’s even more moral ambiguity in the historical subtext when one considers that, while at the time the Mujahadeen could have been considered freedom fighters defending their country against a foreign invasion, some of the money and weapons the United States supplied them with later came back to bite it when some of those rebels later became Taliban and Al Qaeda (Osama bin Laden himself was a Mujahadeen rebel fighting the Soviets in the time and place the movie is set). The movie doesn’t shy away from the brutality of a conflict that is considered the Soviet Union’s equivalent to the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, an outwardly far more powerful military bogged down by comparatively primitive rebels in a bloody stalemate that dragged on for a futile decade and ended in a withdrawal. The Soviets might have more firepower, but the Mujahadeen are fighting on their home turf and know the lay of the land while the tank they’re chasing is hopelessly lost. There’s also interpersonal conflicts within both groups; the tank crew is a fractious group barely held together by Daskal’s iron fist, while there are equally testy relations between Taj and his cousin Moustafa, whose motives are less-than-pure (he wants the tank as a prize). We get a little backstory on Konstantin and Daskal; Konstantin’s “thinking for himself” has gained a reputation as insubordinate and gotten him busted down from military intelligence to tank crewman, while Daskal has spent virtually his entire life at war (he boasts of destroying German tanks as a child in Stalingrad), which gives a little context to his behavior. The filmmakers did an interesting thing with the language and accents onhand, casting the Soviet characters with American actors speaking in their natural American voices without anyone attempting a hint of a Russian accent, while the Afghan Mujahadeen speak Pashto with subtitles (Steven Bauer learned his lines phonetically). This initially leads us to relate to the tankers above the Mujahadeen, then challenges our first instincts. Daskal could be considered the “villain”, but The Beast‘s angle is a “war is hell” slant in which war itself, above all, is the real villain; in fact, the film’s original full title was The Beast of War. The conflict remains fairly small-scale, pitting a small band of men against a single tank, but the low $8 million budget isn’t obvious and production values are strong; the tank onhand is an Israeli-modified Soviet T-55, and Israel’s desert effectively substitutes for Afghanistan (at the time the movie was made, the Soviet-Afghan war was still ongoing), its bleak landscape accentuating the grim tone and strikingly captured by cinematographer Douglas Milsome, meshing effectively with Mark Isham’s score.

The mostly fairly low-profile cast is strong. Jason Patric brings an everyman quality to the humanist Konstantin, who finds himself sympathizing with the Afghans more than his own comrades-in-arms, and is nicely-paired with Steven Bauer (when they eventually share the screen) who plays the new Khan Taj with a mix of honor, vengeance, and inexperienced uncertainty. One could argue the standout though is an uncharacteristically trim George Dzundza, who lost a considerable amount of weight to play a tank crewman and plays against type as an obsessive military man who has been in war so long that it has eroded both his humanity and his sanity. It doesn’t take long for us to suspect Daskal is slightly unglued, but Dzundza avoids taking it over-the-top, which keeps him scarily believable (he’s a spiritual cousin to characters like Tom Berenger’s Sergeant Barnes in Platoon or Robert Shaw’s fanatical Panzer commander in Battle of the Bulge). The supporting characters are clearly-delineated: among the tank crewmen Erick Avari’s cultured, ill-fated Samad, Don Harvey’s belligerent sycophant Kaminski and Stephen Baldwin’s conflicted but weak-willed Golikov, while among the Mujahadeen, Chaim Jeraffi’s opportunistic Moustafa and Kabir Bedi’s older, wiser Akbar.

With somewhat similar themes to the likes of Platoon, set apart with a less-familiar setting, The Beast remains an engaging and evocative character-oriented war drama that paints in murky gray areas while serving up enough conventional action for mainstream viewers. For fans of the genre, it’s worth taking this ride.

* * *