In “The Beast”, Samuel L. Jackson plays the President of the United States if he were Samuel L. Jackson. He has a different name and certainly a different job title. But otherwise this is Samuel L. Jackson playing the screen version of himself that we’ve all come to know over his fifty-plus-year career. There’s even a joke thrown in about the star’s very loud and very specific was of enunciating a certain profanity.

That may make “The Beast” sound like a comedy but it’s far from it. instead it’s the latest action film from director Renny Harlin. Amazingly, this is Harlin’s third film this year and his seventh in the last four years. There are both good and bad ways of viewing those numbers. On one hand, it shows he’s an incredibly hard worker who is able to get his movies over the finish line. On the other hand, it makes you wonder what he could do if he put a little more time into each project.

**Image Courtesy of Aura Entertainment**

Either way, “The Beast” is as straightforward as action movies get. It’s a propulsive and pulpy genre movie mostly built around a single conceit. It’s checks a ton of boxes, makes absolutely no sense at times, and has plot holes galore. At the same time, it possesses a certain B-movie energy and charm that not only fuels the action, but that also helps maintain the entertainment value, no matter how absurd things get.

As mentioned, Jackson plays the President of the United States who the film only addresses as Mr. President or by his first name, Oscar. Harlin wastes no time, kicking things off with the President attending a summit in an unnamed foreign city with other heads of state. Chaos erupts when terrorists attack in what turns out to be a series of coordinated hits around the globe.

Oscar manages to get himself and a seriously wounded Secret Service agent named Taft (Joel Kinnaman) into his presidential limousine – a state-of-the-art, heavily armored, and heavily armed rolling fortress dubbed “The Beast”. With his driver dead, the commander-in-chief takes the wheel and speeds towards a rendezvous point. As he frantically drives, he is guided by the generic central command (voiced by Eoin Macken) who is just as confused as he is.

The majority of the movie takes place in and around the Beast as the President endures furious attacks along routes that have been compromised by the thinly sketched enemy coalition. Meanwhile Taft is bleeding out in the backseat, adding to the already established sense of urgency. It’s a simple premise with a clear and concise trajectory. It occasionally veers from that trajectory with scenes meant to add more humanity. But it’s never long before we’re thrown right back into the action.

Harlin doesn’t let the confinement of the story’s single-setting slow things down. He creatively utilizes the Beast in a number of thrilling ways, artfully using the camera inside the car and out. And the further we go, the more bloody the violence gets. At the same time, screenwriter Umair Aleem works hard to ensure the movie has a heartbeat. We see it in Oscar’s deep concern for his wife Rosa and in his PTSD from the Vietnam War. These are good touches that give a human pulse to an otherwise silly movie.

But even with its strengths, “The Beast” can’t quite overcome its shortcomings. On the action side, some of the attacks get noticeably repetitive, and several of the scenarios are just too goofy to get past. Even worse, they open up some gaping holes in the story to go along with the ambiguous setting and the ambiguous enemy. Ultimately Jackson carries the load in a movie that’s tailored to the seasoned 77-year-old’s strengths and weaknesses. But he can only carry it so far.