Samuel L. Jackson is back behind the wheel of the most powerful car on Earth, and director Renny Harlin has handed him a vehicle built for pure vengeance. The Beast, the high-concept action-thriller that reunites Jackson with his Long Kiss Goodnight and Deep Blue Sea collaborator, opens in theaters on October 9, delivering what early reception describes as a relentless, full-throttle throwback to the big-idea thrillers of an earlier era.
The film’s premise is lean by design. The President of the United States, played by Jackson, finds himself trapped inside his own armored fortress-limousine after terrorists assassinate nearly his entire Secret Service detail in a coordinated strike. With only a wounded agent named Taft—portrayed by Joel Kinnaman—bleeding out beside him, POTUS must drive himself through a war-torn landscape to reach a designated extraction point.
A Nation Collapses Around One Armored Car
What makes The Beast more than a simple chase picture is the scale of the catastrophe unfolding outside its bulletproof windows. An unidentified alliance of enemies has launched simultaneous attacks across the United States and multiple other nations, abruptly plunging the world into upheaval and effectively crippling the American national defense apparatus. The enemy’s agenda remains murky throughout, but their firepower and training are more than enough to keep one man and his car on the run.
The limousine itself—The Beast of the title—is far from ordinary transportation. Equipped with an array of hi-tech offensive weapons, it functions as a rolling fortress that POTUS wields against unending waves of attackers, earning its reputation as essentially the President’s own Batmobile. The film plays out in real time, and per its marketing, it opens with an explosive bang before never once letting up.
Samuel L. Jackson brings a mix of badassery and vulnerability to the role of President of the United States in The Beast, director Renny Harlin’s fun throwback to high-concept action movies of the past.
Critical verdict on The Beast
The Chemistry at the Heart of the Storm
At its core, The Beast operates as a two-hander on wheels. Jackson and Kinnaman share nearly every frame, with Taft fading in the backseat while POTUS refuses to abandon protocol or put himself first. Their chemistry carries the film, though reviewers note that no one can match Jackson’s screen presence once he commands it.
The President is not an ordinary hero. A Vietnam War veteran, his PTSD is retriggered by the attack and the surrounding bloodshed, leaving him wracked with survivor’s guilt from both his past deployments and the agents now dying for him today. He had believed his inner demons controlled through the support of his wife Rosa, voiced by Jackson’s real-life spouse, actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson—though the First Lady herself is also in peril across town. The result, as one review puts it, is that the terrorists simply pissed off the wrong President: a man trained to kill.
An Old-School Craft Forged for Today
The Beast’s run through the war-ravaged streets of Los Angeles evokes the final convoy sequence in Black Hawk Down played out within the lawlessness of The Purge or Grand Theft Auto—a story set behind enemy lines where those lines have been redrawn across what was once home soil. Harlin and screenwriter Umair Aleem channel the spirits of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and Walter Hill’s The Warriors, forging a lean B-movie that deserves consideration whenever critics compile lists of “one crazy night” films or movies confined to a single location. Tuomas Kantelinen’s score leans heavily into the synth-driven sound associated with Carpenter and Escape from New York.
To ground the performance, Harlin shot the limo scenes on an LED stage—similar to how Matt Reeves captured Robert Pattinson and Colin Farrell during the Batmobile versus Penguin chase in The Batman—allowing Jackson and Kinnaman to react to real mayhem rather than imagine it. A 360-degree camera setup inside The Beast orients viewers through the car’s geography without ever feeling overused.
Looking Ahead
The Beast does not claim to reinvent the action-thriller genre, but per its reception, it successfully claws back the fundamental elements that first drew audiences to them. For fans of taut, single-location thrillers and old-school high-concept cinema, The Beast arrives in theaters on October 9 as a lean, mean ride built for vengeance—and furious anger.
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