Beast

Idris Elba anchors this tense existential action-thriller as a dad trying to protect his daughters from a raging lion.

Idris Elba is one of those actors who could be doing seemingly nothing onscreen and you still can’t take your eyes off him. Like many American audiences, I first encountered him in “The Wire” playing rising drug lord Stringer Bell, a man who seemed barely not to move at all yet emanated a palpable sense of danger and calculation.

He tackles a traditional action-thriller role in “Beast,” playing an American doctor on an excursion to Africa to visit his deceased wife’s homeland. They are attacked by a rampaging lion whose pride has been cut down by poachers, and is now intent on killing any and all humans it encounters.

Let me pause right here. A friend and fellow film thinker dismissed the movie after our screening, calling it an unwitting sequel to “Cujo,” the dreadful horror flick based on a Stephen King book that’s almost entirely a mother and daughter trapped in their car by a mad dog. Lions simply don’t behave this way, he said, adding that he hates movies where animals become the cinematic villains simply for following their instincts.

Much truth there.

I’ll just say that every movie requires you to make your way across that suspension bridge of disbelief as the entry point to telling a story. You have to be willing to take that leap in order to go on the journey the filmmakers want to take you on.

Sometimes, especially for scary movies, it’s best to not explain the exact whys and hows of whatever is threatening the characters we’re supposed to identify with. The stubborn unknowing contributes to their peril.

For me, it certainly works for “Beast.” It’s a lean, mean flick, all high-tension “you are there” existentialist scares. It’s the sort of movie that knows what it wants to do, gets in, gets out in a taut 93 minutes and accomplishes everything it wanted. It’s a frenzied, nail-biting popcorn flick.

Elba plays Nate Samuels, an American doctor whose wife passed fairly recently. They were estranged in the year during the sickness that would claim her, and teen daughters Meredith aka Mere (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Sava Jeffries) have built up huge reserves of resulting antipathy toward their dad.

A typical middle-aged male, he was caught up in his work and assumed he and his wife would have time to work things out — until cancer reared its death’s-head.

Ostensibly, they’ve come to South Africa to visit Nate’s old friend Martin Battles, a naturalist battling against poachers. He’s played by Sharlto Copley, who’s made up with his beard and eyebrows in such a sharp-angled way he looks like an old G.I. Joe doll freshly punched from the plastics factory.

Really, though, Nate wants his girls to visit their mother’s country to discover their roots, reconnect and give healing time to work its magic.

On a private tour of remote safari lands, they encounter an entire village wiped out by a lion attack. Martin is incredulous, insisting that lions will leave humans alone unless antagonized. He himself raised a pair of local brothers from cubhood, wrassling good-naturedly with the huge creatures.

While fleeing the rogue lion, the group becomes separated, their Toyota Land Cruiser gets stuck with the girls trapped inside, and their meager supply of water quickly dwindles while they await help. There are a lot hurried, indistinct conversations on walkie-talkies, and of course the usual moments of ill-thought impulsivity where the audience screams, “No! Don’t do that!”

Elba, with his commanding physical presence, plays against type as a meek suburban dad who eventually finds his manly mettle, bringing the fight to the lion. The creature is rendered with some live animal shots along with CGI for the action scenes. Nate, Martin and the others become increasingly torn and tired from the ordeal.

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur (“Adrift”) from a screenplay by Ryan Engle, based on a story by Jaime Primak Sullivan, “Beast” will win no awards for originality. It’s a simple game of building tension and then releasing it in sudden, sharp spurts of violence.

The backstory about the family animosity is just an excuse to layer in an additional level of conflict to the proceedings. Elba is the guy just trying to keep it all together and be the strong, protective father figure he’s failed at recently. The daughters are just bundles of traits — like the older one’s old-school photography hobby — to enable his redemptive journey.

Illogical lion or not, “Beast” is fast-paced, solid piece of entertainment that knows just where to scratch your itch for thrills ‘n’ chills.