For a nation obsessed with professional sport, there is a surprising dearth of Aussie sports films. There have been, of course, a handful of memorable ones: The Club (1980), The Coolangatta Gold (1984) and, more recently, The Final Winter (2007).

But apart from the low-budget 2024 film Life After Fighting – understandable if you haven’t heard of it, it made less than A$6,000 at the box office – Beast is the first Australian film to be set in the world of mixed martial arts.

Patton James (Daniel MacPherson) is a retired fighter pulled back into the game due to tough circumstances. His young daughter Maddie (Sol Nc Carrico) needs to see an expensive specialist, his wife Luciana (Kelly Gale) is pregnant with another, and he barely makes a living working for a petty tyrant on a fishing boat.

When the opportunity to earn $150,000 fighting his former nemesis, world champion Xavier Grau (Bren Foster), arises, he finds it impossible to resist, despite the imprecations of his loving wife.

So Patton returns to his old trainer Sammy (Russell Crowe). And despite some bad blood between them, Sammy and his daughter Rose (Amy Shark, in her feature film debut) end up........

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