Review: 'Beast' is a bloody survival tale of humans vs. a lion, where the action comes from the characters' bad decisions.

The survival drama “Beast” is, like its title creature, lean and fast and brutal — an action thriller where people tend to act because it’s the dramatically interesting thing to do, if not always the smartest.

Idris Elba stars as Dr. Nate Samuels, an American doctor who’s on vacation with his teen daughters, Meredith (Iyana Halley) and Norah (Leah Jeffries), on safari in South Africa. They’re going to a remote area, at the village where Nate’s wife was born. She and Nate divorced, and she died of cancer before a hoped-for reconciliation — a bone of contention with the daughters, particularly Meredith, who has taken up her mother’s interest in photography.

Greeted by Nate’s old friend, Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley), the Samuels family gets the VIP tour of the savanna, even encountering a pride of lions. Martin is friendly with the two male lions in the pride, and advises Meredith and Norah that in the pride, the women hunt while the men protect the pride. Martin also informs the family of another threat in the area: Poachers who have made an industry of killing lions for their teeth, claws and bones.

At a nearby village, they make a gruesome discovery: Many dead bodies, apparently killed by a large male lion. That lion — his pride having been killed by poachers — seems to seek revenge on humans, and attacks the SUV with the Samuels family inside it.

If this scenario feels like a Liam Neeson movie, know that screenwriter Ryan Engle also wrote two Neeson action vehicles, “Non-Stop” and “The Commuter.” The plot contours, particularly the climactic man-vs.-animal battle, also feel taken from “The Grey,” in which Neeson famously punched a wolf.

Director Baltasar Kormákur (“Everest,” “2 Guns”) has a knack for making action sequences that move with dynamic energy, even if they’re predicated on bad decisions. (This movie sets some kind of record for people running away from the car after being told “stay in the car.”) The movie is exciting in the moment, even if it doesn’t hold up to rational scrutiny.

The far-fetched nature of the story is worth sitting through if it means watching Elba to kick butt while showing his sensitive side as a trying-to-be-engaged divorced dad. Elba brings a needed weight to a movie that could, if left unchecked, veer into ridiculousness as the computer-animated lions attack.

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‘Beast’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 19, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for violent content, bloody images and some language. Running time: 93 minutes.