Critics pan Renny Harlin's "The Beast," with Samuel L. Jackson as a driving U.S. president

Left · 2Renny Harlin's action film "The Beast" stars Samuel L. Jackson as U.S. President Oscar Palladin, who drives the armored presidential car of the title while escaping a terrorist attack. 1 2 Left · 2Joel Kinnaman plays Taft, the president's only surviving Secret Service agent, who bleeds out in the back seat while the president treats him and talks to him. 1 2 Left · 2Umair Aleem wrote the screenplay, and both reviewers note that nearly all of the film takes place inside the vehicle. 2 1

Left · 1Variety's Guy Lodge calls the film a "Subpar Actioner" that falls below Harlin's earlier collaborations with Jackson, "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and "Deep Blue Sea." He describes it as "noisy, ugly and dull," with chintzy visual effects and a schticky Jackson performance. 1 Left · 1Lodge says the film feels like a video game and borrows from other movies, citing "Pulp Fiction" and "Speed." He calls it a high-concept "geezer teaser" for the 77-year-old Jackson, who spends most of it talking, and concludes that it is "both a boor, and a bore." 1 Left · 1The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck calls it a B-movie that skips plot and character development, and "as silly as I hope I’ve made it sound and, more egregiously, tedious to boot." He says Harlin does what he can with the action scenes but cannot offset the talkiness or the resemblance to a video game. 2

Left · 1Scheck jokes about the film's excesses: a president with Rambo-level combat skills, an armored car with drones and a self-driving function, and a script that plays up Jackson's profanity. He also compares it to Air Force One, Independence Day and G20, and says scenes may be shared by "our current cosplaying commander in chief." He ends on a lighter note: the first lady's phone voice is Jackson's real-life spouse, LaTanya Richardson Jackson. 2