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“Beckett” wants to be one of those paranoid thrillers from the 1970s, where the hero finds himself in an untenable situation surrounded by those he cannot trust. Films like “ The Parallax View ” and “ Three Days of the Condor ” immediately spring to mind as examples. If you value your time, you’ll go for one of those instead of this uninvolving hash made with international politics, corrupt government officials, kidnapping, and incredulous last-reel heroics. Because it’s on Netflix, you may be more forgiving than if you paid 20 bucks to see this in a theater. However, you’ll eventually be tempted to see what else is available besides director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino ’s English-language debut. 

John David Washington plays Beckett, an American traveling the backroads of Greece with his girlfriend, April ( Alicia Vikander ). These two have absolutely no chemistry onscreen, despite “Beckett” opening with them in bed together. Their idea of fun is looking at strangers and creating backstories for them. “Your stories always turn sleazy,” Beckett tells her. It’s the only thing we learn about April. The duo is touring the more remote, rocky parts of Greece after being warned that a protest would be occurring outside their Athens hotel. April scolds Beckett for being irresponsible for not calling the bed and breakfast where they’ll be staying in the boondocks. This is all we’ll learn about him.

If you didn’t know “Beckett” was a thriller, you’d think it was about two mismatched people with dry interests, mundane conversations, and zero attraction. The thriller elements kick in when Beckett falls asleep at the wheel and runs off the road, killing April and injuring himself in the process. The car flies through an abandoned house as well before stopping. As he’s trying to escape his vehicle, Beckett thinks he sees a woman and a red-headed preteen. When he speaks to them, begging for help, they suddenly disappear. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom shoots this as if it may be a trauma-related hallucination, so we’re not sure if our eyes are to be trusted. When cops start posing questions about the accident, the situation gets serious. Danger and violence become imminent; Filomarino keeps the pacing uneven and his protagonist uninteresting.

Writer Kevin A. Rice plays up the language barrier issues nicely—they’re the only suspenseful moments because the Greek remain untranslated. We’re as helpless as Beckett, who probably should have learned some basic Greek before embarking on this journey. Whenever someone who can speak English reverts to their native tongue, the film bristles with a sinister paranoia. Far more sinister are the two people, a bearded male cop and a blonde woman, who inexplicably start shooting at Beckett when they find he has returned to the scene of his accident. In the melee, he’s shot. This will not be the last bullet to pierce through our protagonist while he’s on the run.

“Beckett” does nothing with the notion that a Black man would stick out like a sore thumb in rural Greece. Instead, it keeps him running while introducing the aforementioned political plot-line. The protest march under that hotel in Athens has something to do with Karras ( Yorgos Pirpassopoulos ), the newly elected leader rumored to have a shady past. Later, Beckett will team up briefly with two activists, Eleni ( Maria Votti ) and Lena ( Vicky Krieps ), who are headed into town to attend that rally. By this point, numerous acts of violence have been perpetrated on the poor guy, including beatings and falls from great heights. By the closing credits, he will also be stabbed, slashed, and shot (again and again). In the film’s most ridiculous moment, he jumps several stories to land on a moving car exiting a parking garage.

Through all this carnage, Beckett remains an enigma, and a very dull one at that. Even the violent scenes feel half-hearted. Washington doesn’t click with anybody onscreen; he plays Beckett so blandly that it becomes a chore watching him. Maybe it’s the roles he’s had lately, but I remain stunned by how forgettable this actor has been in a leading role. From the resentful “Malcolm and Marie” to Christopher Nolan ’s “ Tenet ,” he hasn’t done anything on the big screen as sharp, charismatic, and dangerous as he was in “ BlacKkKlansman .” (TV is another matter, as he’s quite good on “Ballers.”) Filomarino keeps Beckett running for his life, but we have no incentive to care whether he’ll live or die.

We do know Beckett can hardly take the risk of trusting someone, even if his situation is so dire that he has to rely on the kindness of strangers. But if you’ve seen any early-1970s thriller, you can easily guess who’ll be the turncoats and who’ll be the allies. “Beckett” made me wish its titular hero had seen them, too. They not only would have told him who to trust, they would have shown him what a compelling main character looked like as well.

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Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Beckett (2021)

109 minutes

John David Washington as Beckett

Alicia Vikander as April

Vicky Krieps as Lena

Boyd Holbrook as Tynan

Daphne Alexander as Thalia Symons

Panos Koronis as Xenakis

• Ferdinando Cito Filomarino

Writer (story by)

• Kevin A. Rice

Cinematographer

• Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
• Walter Fasano
• Ryuichi Sakamoto

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‘Beckett’ Review: He Must Go On

In this unthrilling thriller, John David Washington plays an Everyman who racks up a lot of miles while running on empty.

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By Manohla Dargis

In “Beckett,” John David Washington plays a guy who keeps stumbling into trouble. He’s an ordinary man, or so we’re to believe. This conceit, though, is soon torpedoed both by a story that grows more implausible with each passing second and by his character’s gift for self-preservation. Especially impressive in this respect are his legs, which pump like pistons as he sprints through bullets and other dangers that keep getting in his way.

In genre terms, “Beckett” is a thriller, if one that’s light on thrills. Mostly, it is a Running Man Movie. Men and women have been running — literally or metaphorically, on foot or by car — as long as movies have been around. Sometimes, the runners seem directionless (and go in circles), yet even when they don’t know their final destination (Mexico? Canada?), they adhere to a few rules of the road. They tend not to respect borders or boundaries, including those of genre, and rush in wherever they can, in comedies, noirs, westerns, you name it. Invariably they head toward danger.

When you first meet Washington’s character, Beckett, he’s traveling on the Greek mainland with his girlfriend, April (Alicia Vikander), where they’re poking around some ruins in what seems to be off-season. (A negligible presence, Vikander seems to have been cast because she’s a name.) Beckett, who works in tech, doesn’t seem interested in the scenery; his eyes and attention are fixed on April. Their smiles and coziness are stiff and unpersuasive, as is the dialogue. But the two of them are pretty and like to smooch, and it’s agreeable or at least pleasant enough watching movie people nuzzle each other.

Something happens and Beckett is soon alone and on the move, crossing a land that resembles an obstacle course. Filled with enigmatic villains, good Samaritans, Mediterranean scrub and little else (not even racial prejudice), the Greece that Beckett traverses is a destabilizing, putatively exotic backdrop for our hapless hero. In shrewder hands, this could read as a critique of the tourist-board shilling of certain movies. Here, however, the absence of blue seas, charming goats and dimensionally rendered locals seems like indifference, to the point that it’s hard not to think the country’s appeal rests entirely in the tax breaks it grants filmmakers who shoot there.

The story is at once overstuffed and underdeveloped, fusing personal tragedy with political intrigue. For reasons that never make much sense, people with guns are chasing Beckett, whose primary distinction is his ability to evade capture. So he runs and keeps on running as he wades through water, crosses lonely roads, scampers down dusty hills and hitches a ride with an earnest activist, Lena (a wasted Vicky Krieps). Yet another of those improbable female guardian angels that moviemakers adore, Lena is soon swept up in Beckett’s adventure, helping him piece together the ragged narrative pieces.

For the most part, Beckett clocks miles and looks trapped, which certainly makes him an empathetic (or at least a relatable) figure. But the easy compassion you feel for characters in distress goes only so far. You need something else to bind you to them, whether it’s mystery, charisma, an oddball personality or, well, just the filmmaking. The actors need the very same. Washington is a likable actor and easy on the eyes, but the character is unproductively one-dimensional and so is the performance, which remains reactive and opaque. Here, at least, he can’t turn an underconceptualized character into one whom you either care about or want to watch gasping and grimacing for several hours.

The director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, making his first feature in English (from a script by Kevin A. Rice), keeps the pieces in motion but doesn’t create a sense of urgency of the kind that sustains a feature-length chase. That’s too bad. It’s especially disappointing given some of the talent behind the camera: the music was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto and the cinematographer, costume designer and editor all worked on the art-house release “ Call Me by Your Name. ” Filomarino served as the second unit director on that movie, which presumably explains why its director, Luca Guadagnino, signed onto this one as a producer. Maybe it’s time for someone here to cut the cord.

Beckett Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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Beckett review – sturdy Netflix thriller provides simple throwback pleasures

A Luca Guadagnino-produced thriller about a man, played by John David Washington, on the run in Greece is an enjoyable homage to 70s conspiracy movies

T he *throws hands in the air and gives up* title of the new Luca Guadagnino-produced thriller is a telling sign of a film that no one knows quite what to do with. When Netflix picked it up late last year, it was switched from Born to Be Murdered (which sounds like a Lifetime movie starring Tori Spelling) to Beckett (which sounds like a comedy about either a wise-cracking detective or a mischievous dog or a wise-cracking detective who is also a mischievous dog), both rather awful and both rather far from what the film really is: a curious combination of propulsive on-the-run action and naturalistic Euro drama, too mainstream for the arthouse crowd and too arthouse for the mainstream, now hoping to find its place on a platform where anything and everything goes.

It’s a film conceived and directed by Guadagnino’s ex-boyfriend and collaborator Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, a film-maker showing that he can mostly navigate slickly between pulp and politics, at least until the rather less well-calibrated finale. It’s the story of a couple vacationing in Greece, Beckett (John David Washington, running) and April (Alicia Vikander, sleepwalking), who decide to travel to a more rural area after Athens is overtaken by protests related to the missing son of a politician. But after a tragic accident, Beckett finds himself the unlikely target of a manhunt, having seen something he shouldn’t have, and is forced on the run in a foreign country, trying to uncover the hows and whys before it’s too late.

The opening stretch – designed to endear the couple to us before everything around them turns to chaos – is well-intentioned but a little too distant and a little too perfunctory to really land. It’s an admirably slow start in many ways (Netflix viewers hoping for a burst of action might not make it very far) but the dialogue between the pair is too first draft and their relationship too shallow for us to make the strong emotional connection that Filomarino and writer Kevin A Rice seem to desire from us. The characters are mere chess pieces (calling the film after a protagonist as nondescript as Washington’s Beckett is … a choice) and so it’s only when they start getting yanked around the board that our interest truly piques.

And when the film does flip into genre mode, Filomarino does an impressive job at grounding the kinds of action sequences that are often too polished for us to believe or care about. Centering a film such as this on a so-called “everyman” is by no means a unique gimmick but here, Beckett truly is just an average guy and his believably scrappy and uncoordinated attempts to stay alive make the film that much more immersive. He fights like someone who probably hasn’t been in a fight, at least not for many years – messy and panicked – and this frantic, stressful energy means that for once, we’re never really sure of exactly how things will go and how bad they might get (one subway-based knife fight is remarkably panic-inducing). Washington isn’t always best served by his material (he was a little stiff in Tenet and a little annoying in Malcolm & Marie, both films that would have arguably struggled to make any actor look good) but he’s more comfortable here as someone who’s a little less comfortable with himself and his on-the-fly strategy and even if the character is in dire need of some substance, Washington sells the gruelling physical journey he endures.

There’s an obvious debt owed to paranoid thrillers of the 70s and 80s, such as Alan J Pakula’s The Parallax View or especially Roman Polanski’s Frantic, another film about an American struggling with a clammy foreign nightmare, and Filomarino and Rice do a solid job in taking those tropes and giving them a contemporary update, one that feels loosely rooted to the specifics of Greek politics as well as the far right v far left battles across Europe in general. The details of the unfolding plot are told in smart, sparse snippets (mostly from a brisk Vicky Krieps as an aggrieved activist), broadly easy to understand for the layman, and it’s only in the final act where elements that had been so effortless before start to clang. Boyd Holbrook emerges as an American working at the embassy who speaks only in exposition and his clumsy dialogue is followed by a car stunt that’s too far-fetched to work after the mostly easy-to-believe grit of Washington’s quest.

Like Guadagnino’s grimly transporting Suspiria remake (on which Filomarino was second unit director), there’s a strong grasp of the up-close grit of a place here, of the specific reality of Greece rather than a removed postcard portrayal, helping to show Beckett a living, breathing country rather than just a location. It’s a surprise to him as an American tourist as much as it is to us as an often underserved audience and even when the plotting briefly lapses, we’re right there with him, travelling at speed through a country in believable jeopardy. Like Beckett trying to escape his pursuers, it’s a scrappy little film but one worth keeping up with.

Beckett is now available on Netflix

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• Alicia Vikander
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John David Washington Is a Regular Man on the Run in ‘Beckett’

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

Have you ever accidentally stumbled or — in the case of the titular hero of Netflix ’s Beckett — careened downhill, by way of a fatal car accident, into an international political scandal? Some things only happen to people in movies. What’s curious and invigorating, but also somewhat flawed, about Beckett is the way it maneuvers its path through the fate and psychological tumult of its central character, a man thrown into a whirlwind of grief that coincides with his accidental involvement in a scandal he knows nothing about, set in a country where he does not speak the language, and where the ostensible allies at his disposal are both far out of reach and, even when he reaches them, hardly as trustworthy as he would hope. The premise is ripe; the thrills are rich; the payoff doesn’t come together quite as easily as the rest.

But much of what’s here is good — more interesting for verging on the ridiculous, giving us a man whose motivations make most sense when you remember what must be going on in his head. The movie stars John David Washington as Beckett, an American tourist on vacation in Greece with his girlfriend, April ( Alicia Vikander ). Suffice it to say: something terrible happens. And in the midst of that horror, Beckett gets a glimpse of something — someone — that he shouldn’t, will indeed soon wish that he hadn’t. Beckett and April’s restful vacation happens to overlap with a country’s harrowing political unrest, spurred, most immediately, by the kidnapping of a major political figure’s nephew. It is a grave political situation, as Beckett discovers over time, one thought to be incited by a far-right nationalist party that has ties to, among other institutions, the police. Soon, because of what he’s seen, Beckett is a man on the run from exactly the authorities he would need to make his way out of this maze. Who he can trust, where he will go: all, for a time, linger as open questions. So, this is a movie with a mix of situations at play, overlapping and competing for our and Beckett’s attention. A title hero nearly undone by, not only grief, but overwhelming guilt; a regular man fashioned into a man on the run and, in important ways, completely in the dark; a stranger in a strange land, where the citizens he’s forced to lean on for aid wind up paying the price for their assistance, and where the political situation hovering on all sides feels much larger than any one person can comprehend. It’s a role that begs for a go-for-broke performance from an actor we can believe in, and Washington — a good actor — is charged with hitting a wide range of notes, almost akin to a classic Hitchcock hero. He’s got to be weary, confused, suspicious of most anyone he encounters — and director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino makes good on that weariness with canny reaction shots and moments, many of them subtle, in which Beckett takes a breather and all the tiredness grows in. But there’s another streak, a somewhat erratic throughline, coursing through the movie and Washington’s performance, too. Beckett has an injured arm throughout most of the movie, and yet there doesn’t seem to be a ledge that the man won’t jump off of: At one point he steps over the railing of a parking garage, and you can’t help but think, Oh, God. It feels completely irrational, like watching a regular guy — hardly your typical action hero; not a man who exactly jumps off of bridges and over rocky cliffs with anything like grace —  suddenly get a bug to enact a death wish. In the name of what, becomes a question. Grief emerges as the primary answer. But there’s that whole political angle to grab ahold of, and on this front Beckett proves mystifying, unsatisfying, even as this is always what allows for a pair of great supporting performances: by Vicky Krieps, as earth-angel and political activist Lena, and by Boyd Holbrook, as an employee at the U.S. embassy in Athens who — well, let’s simply say that he catches more than a couple of Washington’s sidelong suspicious glances. Filomarino — who has to this date primarily worked as the second unit director for Call Me By Your Name auteur Luca Guadagnino — makes good on these actors’ qualities, on our instinctive trust and distrust. Beckett isn’t the director’s feature debut, but the movie has the rattling curiosity and excitability of one. The movie flies along, risks the ridiculous, doesn’t entirely add up, but also proves sharp in some of its observations, as during one great scene in which Beckett stumbles off of a train onto a platform and, trusting no one, is palpably overwhelmed by a sense of, Now what ?

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The film’s original title was Born to Be Murdered . I’m glad they changed it — the “born to be” vibe doesn’t quite square, on the surface, with a central characterization more akin to a life thrown in flux by unexpected error and immeasurable grief. It’s true, on the other hand, that there’s a thin underlayer of fate, of a disruptive destiny, lurking just under the skin of everything that happens — a sense of how things might have turned out differently if only Beckett and April had stuck to their original plans, rather than veering off course into the unexpected. The movie doesn’t quite make the most of this idea’s power, nor of any of what feel like its bigger ideas. But when its nose is to the ground — when Beckett is speeding along, trying to make sense of this world — it works, and it works well.

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‘Beckett’ Review: John David Washington Isn’t Your Traditional Hero in Formula-Bending Manhunt Movie

Italian director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino offers his spin on a familiar genre, thrusting a traumatized American into the center of a Greek political conspiracy.

By Peter Debruge

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John David Washington shot “ Beckett ” before last summer’s “Tenet” put the actor on a short list of potential action figures. But when it comes to this considerably more modest, Greece-set manhunt movie — which kicks off the Locarno Film Festival before releasing via Netflix on Aug. 13 — it helps to look at Washington (son of Oscar winner Denzel) as a different kind of character: not your conventional Hollywood hero so much as an average guy caught up in a deadly conspiracy.

Washington plays the eponymous American tourist, who’s roughly the kind of out-of-his-league everyman that Alfred Hitchcock gravitated toward in classics such as “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and “North by Northwest.” But director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino isn’t operating by that playbook as much as audiences might think, which might disappoint those who find the movie on Netflix and expect a straightforward thriller. The suspense is much subtler, the set-pieces less sensational, as Beckett reacts in ways that betray that this guy wasn’t cut out to intervene in an elaborate plot to extort and potentially assassinate a Greek politician.

Beckett simply wants to survive, but the character’s psychology is made even more complicated by the mistake that got him into this mess: While vacationing with his girlfriend (Alicia Vikander), Beckett falls asleep at the wheel. The car flies off the road and smashes into a stone house. What he sees there — a blond woman with a redheaded child, disappearing into the shadows — will directly endanger his life, even if he doesn’t understand what to make of it.

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When Beckett goes back to the site of the accident, he appears still to be in some kind of daze, unaware what he might be looking for. Beckett doesn’t realize he’s the main character in an action movie, so he’s oblivious to the fact his life is threatened when, in a startling deep-focus trick shot, a woman strides into the background of the frame, draws a gun and fires straight at his head. Of course, that shock jolts him into action, as Beckett scrambles for cover. But every decision he makes for the next hour or so seems to be blocked by a kind of incredulity on his part: Beckett can’t believe that the local police officer (Panos Koronis) might be corrupt or that his contact (Boyd Holbrook) at the American consulate in Athens might be mixed up in things.

Audiences, on the other hand, have undoubtedly seen their share of innocent-man-on-the-run thrillers. Maybe not as many as Filomarino, whose 2015 Italian poet biopic “Antonia.” was lovely to look at but far less representative of the director’s own taste than this project. An original idea scripted in collaboration with American screenwriter Kevin A. Rice, “Beckett” reflects the kind of genre fare Filomarino avidly consumes in his free time, bingeing work by John Carpenter, Brian De Palma and Monte Hellman — at least, those are the names that came up in conversation when I last saw him in Los Angeles.

The up-and-coming Italian helmer was together with Luca Guadagnino then, and the latter serves as producer here, helping to attract the top-level cast that fill the lead roles (including “The Phantom Thread” standout Vicky Krieps as a political activist who assists Beckett as he tries to escape the authorities), though it’s the faces of the less recognizable supporting actors (like the beekeeping couple) that make the greatest impression here. Ironically, the coup of landing Washington in the lead could be seen as a weakness by comparison, since he’s well-known enough that it’s easy to overlook or misinterpret the choices he makes for the role: how Washington put on weight so Beckett wouldn’t look the part of an athletic action hero, for example, or the way he appears dazed and slow to react for much of the film.

If Beckett seems too trusting of strangers he meets over the course of the movie, that’s only because audiences are primed to expect that anyone could betray him. Same goes for decisions to hide out or dress his wounds — pauses liable to have people shouting at the screen for him to keep running. In Hollywood movies, protagonists rarely sustain the kind of injuries Beckett does, whereas he gets shot, stabbed and punched up plenty. Plus, there’s the matter of what happens to Vikander’s character, which would be all but unthinkable in a test-marketed studio movie.

But if Filomarino resists giving people what (they think) they want from a thriller — down to the decision to follow Beckett while a major figure gets killed off-screen — then what is he up to exactly? Unlike conspiracy classics like “Three Days of the Condor” or “Z,” this movie is not about the political plot Beckett stumbles into. By the end, he has enough of an idea of the bigger picture to understand why the cop and others have been trying to eliminate him, but more significant to Filomarino than solving that puzzle is witnessing the moment where Beckett changes from a would-be victim trying to save his own life to a proactive hero, who risks dying to rescue the kidnapped boy he spotted after the accident.

Much of Beckett’s behavior feels clumsy and improvised early on, as when he tries to steal a motorcycle and fails miserably. By the end, however, he has evolved from a guy we can identify with to someone we respect, culminating in a foot chase through pandemonium-stricken streets (impressively staged in Athens) and a death-defying jump that would have been completely out of character for him when the story began (when Beckett was worried about his girlfriend stepping off the path at a Greek ruin). Will Netflix viewers get that far in the movie, or will they flip over to something more conventional when this one lags? Hard to say, but it’s intriguing to see Filomarino experiment with the formula and exciting to imagine where his career might go from here.

Reviewed on Netflix, Los Angeles, Aug. 3, 2021. (In Locarno Film Festival — opener.) Running time: 108 MIN.

• Production: (Italy-Brazil-Greece-U.S.) A Netflix release and presentation of a Frenesy Film Co. Memo Films production with Rai Cinema, in association with RT Features, Wise Pictures. Producers: Luca Guadagnino, Marco Morabito, Francesco Melzi d’Eril, Gabriele Moratti. Executive producers: Lisa Muskat, Rodrigo Teixeira, Alan Terpins, Antonio Miyakawa, Federico Marchetti, Daniele Sirtori, Alessandro Melzi d’Eril, Marco Colombo, Giovanni Corrado.
• Crew: Director: Ferdinando Cito Filomarino. Screenplay: Kevin A. Rice; story: Ferdinando Cito Filomarino. Camera: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. Editor: Walter Fasano. Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto.
• With: John David Washington, Boyd Holbrook, Vicky Krieps, Panos Koronis, Alicia Vikander. (English, Greek dialogue)

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Review: John David Washington’s ‘Beckett’ character belongs in a drama, but finds himself in a thriller

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The first clue that the John David Washington starrer “Beckett” is not a typical thriller is that its director is ... Ferdinando Cito Filomarino.

That name might not ring a bell, but the Italian Filomarino (great-nephew of Luchino Visconti ) was the second-unit director for Luca Guadagnino films including “ Call Me By Your Name ,” and Guadagnino is a producer on “Beckett.” So despite its genre and big-name stars — Washington and Alicia Vikander — Filomarino’s second feature has the texture, atmosphere and attention to character of a small European film, rather than the one-liners and physics-defying action of a big-budget popcorn movie. By the way, it’s also suspenseful and involving.

The titular Beckett is an American on vacation in Greece with his beloved girlfriend, April (Vikander). Pure chance throws the business systems integration specialist into a situation he couldn’t have dreamed possible. The rest of “Beckett” is a tense manhunt story, with the tourist desperately scrambling in a strange land where he can’t hide in plain sight. He’s Black in a country in which virtually no one looks like him, he doesn’t speak the language and his wounds are difficult to disguise.

It’s a ‘70s paranoia movie in the best sense. And this is no hackneyed tribute; it’s complex, murky, propulsive. In that genre’s tradition, it pings off recent political events , though the specifics would be a spoiler to discuss (the trailer , should you choose to view it, does contain spoilers). Suffice to say it’s the classic scenario of an ordinary person in way over his head: We share Beckett’s confusion as he runs for his life, trying to figure out which end is up.

Knowing this is a thriller, the opening scenes — a leisurely stroll through this couple’s relationship — might seem out of place , but it’s the right setting for this everyman. He might actually envision his life as an easygoing romantic drama (or perhaps comedy). That he’s thrown into a nonstop chase with his life at stake is as crazy to him as it would be to any of us (apologies to anyone practicing evasive parkour and stoically taking bullets in the extremities on the daily).

Beckett is no superhero. He’s intelligent but makes mistakes. He gets hurt. The fights and flights are admirably sloppy — no one here is a crack shot, there aren’t any spinning roundhouse kicks . The action is painfully real (perhaps with one exception, though even then, to achieve an emotional truth).

“Beckett” takes a welcome step back from the pace and volume that today’s thrillers consider baseline. The story and chase never stop moving, but not at breakneck speed. Filomarino lets in the beauty of Greece. He pauses to appreciate a one-eyed cat. Oscar winner Ryuichi Sakamoto ‘s superb, tactile, stress-inducing music is a muted “internal” score reflecting the protagonist’s state of mind.

The acting befits a drama. Boyd Holbrook (“ Logan ”) and Vicky Krieps (“ Phantom Thread ” and the current “ Old ”) are effective in their roles, and even the random folks who help Beckett along the way read as fleshed-out characters. UCLA-trained director and writer Panos Koronis makes a calm, excellent heavy. Oscar winner Vikander is the very picture of the one , the woman with whom this guy would fall completely in love. The first time we see them out and about, with her bed head and unpainted face, April glows with warmth. Yet Vikander is a skilled enough actress that, even from the start, despite their intoxication with each other, there are layers to her feelings — they recently fought and we feel that, too.

Washington’s everyman is believably human, with his cleverness and limitations. The actor has the difficult task of balancing Beckett’s roiling grief with the adrenaline his survival instinct pushes through his body, and he mostly succeeds. One wishes there were more of that emotion poking through the surface to visibly drive him to the film’s satisfying conclusion. But that’s a small thing compared to “Beckett’s” virtues, of which there are many.

'Beckett'

No rating Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes Playing: Starts streaming on Netflix Aug. 13

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Netflix’s Beckett puts the wrong man at the center of a wrong-man thriller

Tenet star John David Washington lacks the charisma for Netflix’s messy action movie

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The setup to Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s Netflix suspense flick, Beckett , is enticing, even thrilling. Beckett ( Tenet and Malcolm & Marie star John David Washington) wakes up in bed, draped over his girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander). They’re enjoying their Athens vacation, sightseeing the stony ruins and foggy mountains that dot the exotic locale. But they hear a rumor of an upcoming protest that’ll dim their sunny spot. On their drive to a different, quieter resort in the mountains, Beckett falls asleep, crashing their car into a house. Beckett emerges from the crash with a broken arm, but April dies.

Beckett bites off way more than it can chew. Following the crash, Beckett tells police he saw a redheaded child in the house he collided with. He doesn’t know it, but this kid’s face is plastered all over Greece. He’s the kidnapped nephew of the leftist politician Karras (Yorgos Pirpassopoulos), who’s building a coalition to reverse the austerity measures imposed on Greece by the European Union. His strategy has displeased the country’s far-right facists. The film never reveals anything else about these opposing sides, though, which keeps viewers at arm’s length, unable to fully engage with the film’s larger political conflict.

Beckett is the Italian director’s first English-language film. It embroils an unwitting protagonist in Greece’s internal political conflict, sending him on the run from two homicidal, unnamed people (Panos Koronis and Lena Kitsopoulou) posing as cops. Kevin A. Rice’s script follows in the footsteps of similar wrong-man stories: Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps , Andrew Davis’ The Fugitive , and so forth — stories concerning people forced to go on the lam after being sucked into larger conspiracies. This film, unfortunately, fails to live up to the quality of its influences. Filomarino’s Beckett lacks urgency, wit, and a lead actor capable of pulling together its underwritten themes.

Rice’s script is bloated, yet underdeveloped when it tries to balance Beckett’s mourning with his fight for survival. At every turn, he cries at the thought of his dead girlfriend. But the film barely spends setup time with either of them, save for their fleeting sightseeing. And Beckett doesn’t share any memories about her to let viewers in on his loss. It focuses on the pursuit by the false cops, who hope to tie up the loose end Beckett represents before he can reach the American embassy, where US agent Tynan (Boyd Holbrook) is waiting for him. The obstacles these assassins pose aren’t entirely attention-grabbing, because Beckett works past them too easily.

Worst yet, the character as scripted is one-dimensional, giving Washington little to work with. But Washington doesn’t bring much to the table either. He’s overshadowed by his co-stars, flat and devoid of any charisma. Vikander only appears in the film’s opening minutes. In that brief time, she’s a far more giving scene partner than her counterpart, offering furtive glances and maneuvering Washington’s cement block worth of emotions. Not only does Beckett miss her when she’s gone, the audience is likely to miss her presence too.

Vicky Krieps ( Phantom Thread ) as Lena, one of two leftist activists who helps Beckett to the American embassy, also outshines Washington. Krieps’ emotive face offers the sense of warmth that the script cannot. The film barely gives up anything about her underwritten character, but she makes her years of fighting for change visible, and her empathy for Beckett, a man she just met, is written all over her face. Washington struggles to pull a similar range into his character. You need charisma to pull off a wrong-man thriller, a reason to root for the good guy beyond the narrative saying we should. Washington doesn’t have that.

And he never has. He looks physically lost, as though he’s never had a camera pointed at him. (See Tenet .) Whenever he cries, he has a habit, seen in Malcolm & Marie , of rolling his eyes way back into his head to find the tears. And his blank stare doesn’t pull viewers into his worldview. (See Tenet again. Or don’t.) He leaves viewers at a perpetual distance, always watching him react instead of inhabiting his emotions. All these shortcomings come back to bite him here.

Though the lead actor is expected to bear the brunt of responsibility when a film lacks charisma or personal draw — especially a wrong-man movie — it would be unfair to blame Washington alone for this misfire. Beckett evades his pursuers through craggy cliffs, a graffiti-painted train, and in the trunk of a car. But all these setpieces feel like they were captured in haste, and they don’t maximize the inherent intrigue of their surroundings. Why set a film in Greece if you’re going to make its exotic allure so generic? Filomarino needn’t show tourist traps, but he doesn’t find an interesting hole in the wall either. Even the extras are unexciting and seemingly disengaged. Washington, a Black man, is running through the streets with handcuffs on, yet no one blinks an eye.

At times, it feels like Filomarino does want to bring race into the story. But the villains’ intentions aren’t just mysterious, they’re frustratingly opaque. The Greek dialogue isn’t translated in the subtitles, so when the villains discuss Beckett, we don’t know how they’re describing him to each other. We do, however, at different points, hear his pursuers shout into crowds that they’re looking for a Black man. When Beckett arrives at the American Embassy, he sees a picture of Obama. It’s as though Filomarino knows the subtext of an African-American being chased in a foreign country by police, but doesn’t have the narrative or visual vocabulary to tease out his intentions.

The only Beckett crew member who seems to understand the vibe a wrong-man film needs is composer Ryuichi Sakamoto ( The Last Emperor and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence ), whose shrieking strings and off-kilter combination of cymbals and toms builds anxiety. The other moving parts are too substandard to sustain the wanted suspense, to the point where even a protest turned ugly and Beckett leaping off a building to stop a moving car isn’t enough to resuscitate the film. Beckett ’s lead actor is a dull performer spinning a duller web, and he’s the wrong man to deliver this flawed, unruly plot.

Beckett debuts on Netflix on August 13.

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‘Beckett’ Review: John David Washington Carries a Netflix Thriller from Luca Guadagnino’s Protégé

David ehrlich.

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When the pandemic first started raging across the globe last year, it was natural to appreciate the movies that allowed us to travel the world from the relative safety of our own homes; now that this crap been making life miserable for a full 18 months, it’s become even more natural to appreciate the movies that make us never want to go anywhere ever again. Enter: Netflix ’s tense and prescient “Beckett,” which — despite being shot during the summer before COVID — follows the recent likes of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old” and HBO’s “The White Lotus” with another welcome reminder that vacation is actually a total nightmare that will kill you a lot faster than sitting on your couch.

In a certain light, “Beckett” might even be the most nightmarish of the lot, as this paranoid thriller from Luca Guadagnino protégé and frequent second unit director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino unfolds with a dream logic that should prove all too real for people who regularly find themselves running from shadows in their sleep.

The story is simple to a fault: A couple of very attractive but otherwise normal tourists named Beckett ( John David Washington ) and April ( Alicia Vikander ) decide to deviate from their itinerary and ditch Athens for the countryside when the Greek capital is roiled by protests over the government’s latest round of austerity measures. As they drive to a remote inn after a long day of wandering through ancient ruins and exchanging the ominous dialogue of movie characters who are minutes away from disaster — “We’re not supposed to be here,” April says for no apparent reason. “I mean, no one knows where we are, and it’s just the two of us. Figures in a landscape.” — Beckett falls asleep at the wheel and sends their rental car flying through the concrete walls of a roadside house. April is dead by the time medics arrive on the scene, and Beckett’s only solace is that the squatters he almost flattened with the car (undocumented refugees?) have scattered into thin air seemingly unscathed.

Or maybe that’s not such a comfort, after all. When a guilt-ridden Beckett returns to the scene of the accident after lying about its cause to local authorities and April’s parents, the police who took his statement begin shooting at him; not because they mistake Beckett for someone else, but rather because they know exactly who he is and what he knows (even as Beckett himself begins to doubt both of those points). While our hero may be convinced that he’s stuck in a wrong man thriller, the bullets that whizz by — and sometimes into — his body sure feel like they’re being fired at him with conviction.

Every car he takes or train he sneaks aboard is heading towards harm. Every too-quiet town he wanders through feels like it’s one moaning villager from turning into the first level of a new “Resident Evil” video game. Every civilian he asks for help winds up dead, including the poor apiarist who lends a desperate Beckett their cell phone during the most inadvertently hilarious bee-stinging scene this side of Neil LaBute’s “The Wicker Man.” There is no escape. The nightmare vibe is so pervasive that conspiracy-minded viewers might wonder if the whole movie is an Ambien trip that Beckett has after he inexplicably pops one of April’s (massive) leftover sleeping pills at the spot where she died, even though Filomarino’s ultra-tactile aesthetic is less David Lynch than Alan J. Pakula, and Kevin A. Rice’s uncomplicated screenplay is less inclined towards the sinister dream politics of “The Parallax View” than it is the hard realities of “All the President’s Men.”

Indeed, this is an increasingly literal film that’s best enjoyed at face-value, as errant mentions of a nationalist assassination plot and a chance encounter with two German activists — one played with palpable warmth by Vicky Krieps — do little to complicate Filomarino’s spin cycle of a story. Beckett is lost in some beautiful yet foreboding Greek locale (e.g. the Vikos Gorge, the mountains of Tsepelovo, Boyd Holbrook’s American diplomat), he grimaces a lot, someone tries to kill him, he makes an improbable escape, rinse and repeat.

Which isn’t to suggest there’s nothing to enjoy about that pattern, nor how it reflects Beckett’s gnawing feelings of guilt, helplessness, and isolation. For one thing, “Beckett” looks and sounds divine, even on a Netflix platform that tends to flatten the life out of every image. “Suspiria” and “Memoria” cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom shoots the movie with a fall crispness so bracing that you can feel a chill in the air, while Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score — if a far cry from his most memorable work — flushes the movie with horn squelches of raw menace.

Beyond that, Washington’s reactive and effectively ragged performance is embossed with a vivid sense of hyperreality that makes it hard to tell if Beckett is the only sane person in an absurd situation, or the only absurd person in a situation that makes perfect sense to everyone else. The “Tenant” star is powerless in the face of stiff dialogue (lines like “Oh, my God, I think I’m having a love attack” don’t help), but also displays a visceral everyman physicality that makes good on his action movie bonafides, as well as his background as a college football player.

That Washington is one of the only Black faces in the film also lends Beckett a visible otherness among the olive-skinned Greeks and white supporting cast, though Filomarino seems more focused on the character’s invisibility : The most effective moments in “Beckett” frame the title in a way that accentuates the apathy of those around him, as if his frantic situation were happening on the other side of an event horizon. Thin and politically disengaged as this diverting Euro-thriller can be, it never forgets how even the most desperate of people can be left to suffer in plain sight — nothing but figures in a landscape.

“Beckett” premiered at the 2021 Locarno Film Festival. It will be available to stream on Netflix starting Friday, August 13.

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John david washington in netflix’s ‘beckett’: film review.

An American tourist gets caught up in a Greek political conspiracy in this manhunt thriller produced by Luca Guadagnino, also featuring Alicia Vikander.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Admiration for the 1970s conspiracy thrillers of Alan J. Pakula, John Frankenheimer and Sydney Pollack is baked into Beckett , though little of the craftsmanship that made the best of those movies thrum with danger and tension. Directed with a workmanlike lack of style by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino and written by Kevin A. Rice without the required ambiguities to feed the protagonist’s paranoia, this pedestrian wrong-place-wrong-time manhunt through Greece never really sparks. And the jury that’s still out over whether John David Washington is movie-star material gets shaky evidence to support that case.

Filomarino has served regularly as second unit director on the features of Luca Guadagnino , who takes lead producer credit here and shares his key tech collaborators, notably DP Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and editor Walter Fasano. But even with a score by Ryuichi Sakamoto that mixes orchestral passages with jagged ambient distortion and bursts of unsettling percussion, Beckett is all chase, no pace. Its scenic locations from Delphi to Athens make it a decent choice to kick off the Locarno Film Festival with a Piazza Grande screening, but it’s unlikely to stand out from the streaming pack when it bows on Netflix Aug. 13.

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Release date : Friday, Aug. 13 Cast : John David Washington, Boyd Holbrook, Vicky Krieps, Alicia Vikander, Panos Koronis, Maria Votti, Lena Kitsopoulou Director : Ferdinando Cito Filomarino Screenwriter : Kevin A. Rice; story by Filomarino

Washington plays the title character, a tech analyst from Ohio vacationing in Greece in 2015 with his girlfriend April ( Alicia Vikander ). They visit the ancient ruins of Delphi and joke at a taverna afterwards about finding their own Oracle of Zeus to consult. But it’s obvious from the ecstasy overload of their swooning mutual infatuation that a devastating loss lies ahead.

Sure enough, while driving on the twisty mountain roads at night, Beckett nods off at the wheel, sending the car hurtling over the edge with April thrown from the wreck. The vehicle’s fall is broken by a dilapidated cottage, which Officer Xenakis (Panos Koronis), the cop who questions Beckett at a village hospital, assures him has been unoccupied for years. But Beckett distinctly witnessed a preteen boy being ushered out of sight by a woman as he was coming to after the accident.

When he returns to the scene days later, Beckett barely makes it out of the house alive, stalked by a female shooter (Lena Kitsopoulou) and Xenakis. That encounter kicks off a pursuit across the region as he seeks help from hunters, beekeepers and the driver of a tour bus while narrowly escaping brushes with the crooked cop and trying to reach the U.S. embassy in Athens.

He starts to make connections when he recognizes the boy in a missing person poster and learns the kid is the abducted nephew of a political candidate gaining at the polls by promising an alternative to the country’s far-right ultranationalist movement. Vicky Krieps shows up as an activist supporting the leftist candidate, who believes Beckett’s story and offers to help; and Boyd Holbrook appears during the final act as an American embassy officer whose evasive answers should alert Beckett that something smells wrong.

None of these supporting characters has sufficient definition to be interesting, leaving the burden entirely on Washington’s Beckett. The filmmakers are careful not to turn him into some endlessly resourceful fighting machine in the Liam Neeson thriller mode. But even so, for someone who has probably never seen much physical action beyond the gym, Beckett is remarkably adept at jumping off railings, rolling down mountains, running for his life and outmaneuvering trained killers — seldom slowed down by a broken arm in a sling or multiple gun and knife wounds. Washington shifts between three principal settings of shattered grief, fearful panic and grim determination, but fails to bring much personality to any of them.

Considering the amount of ground covered in the plot, this is a curiously undynamic film that struggles to inject urgency into the protagonist’s life-or-death situation. That’s also down to the sketchy outline of the political backdrop, with unrest stirred by the austerity measures gripping the economically beleaguered country and corruption at multiple levels. The closing crescendo unfolds in and around an Athens city block choked by protestors and includes an assassination, a clash between Beckett and his assailants in a labyrinthine carpark, and the usual disclosure of Americans with sticky fingers in other folks’ political business. But even with all that, Beckett still manages to end on a note of anticlimactic flatness.

Full credits

Cast: John David Washington, Boyd Holbrook, Vicky Krieps, Alicia Vikander, Panos Koronis, Maria Votti, Lena Kitsopoulou Production companies: Frenesy Film Company, Memo Films, RAI Cinema, in association with RT Features, Wise Pictures Distribution: Netflix Director: Ferdinando Cito Filomarino Screenwriter: Kevin A. Rice; story by Filomarino Producers: Luca Guadagnino, Marco Morabito, Francesca Melzi d’Eril, Gabriele Moratti Executive producers: Lisa Muskat, Rodrigo Teixeira, Alan Terpins, Antonio Miyakawa, Federico Marchetti, Daniele Sirtori, Alessandro Melzi d’Eril, Marco Colombo, Giovanni Corrado Director of photography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom Production designer: Elliott Hostetter Costume designer: Giulia Piersanti Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto Editor: Walter Fasano Casting: Francine Maisler, Anna Nikolau

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'Beckett' Is A Perfectly Average Chase Thriller

Linda Holmes

John David Washington in the new movie Beckett on Netflix. Yannis Drakoulidis/Netflix hide caption

John David Washington in the new movie Beckett on Netflix.

There is a moment in the new Netflix thriller Beckett in which the main character played by John David Washington — who's already been in a rollover accident, been shot, been tased, been stung by bees, and likely broken both of his ankles — gets flex cuffs slapped on him, and now he's on the run ... in flex cuffs. The movie isn't even half over.

You already know a lot about how you'll feel about Beckett by how much this description makes you roll your eyes, versus shout "hooray!", versus a little bit of both. Beckett is listed as Netflix's number one film as of this writing, and yet there's little buzz around it. And that may be because of how precisely it meets the requirements of a movie of its type without ever meaningfully exceeding any expectation you might have.

And yet, I found myself coming down (gently) in the positive column on a film that, perhaps inevitably, has a 51 percent positive rating over on the review aggregator site Metacritic. I must confess: I just love a movie where a guy cannot catch a break. These cascading problems that become more and more ridiculous are the bread and butter of what you might call the For Heaven's Sake, What Now? genre. There's a little bit of this in movies like Die Hard (with the bare feet) and Speed (when Keanu Reeves stabs the gas tank with the screwdriver), but in a film like Beckett , it's the whole story. This movie doesn't actually have Beckett come down with scurvy and have him run over by the tuba section of a marching band on his way to a safe house that turns out to be haunted, but that's only because there's not time. Directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, Beckett is a movie about a guy who cannot catch a break — unless it's a break of his own arm.

Washington plays Beckett (just Beckett), an American on vacation in Greece with his girlfriend (played by Alicia Vikander, but don't get too excited, because it's a small role). They get in a terrible car accident, and once Beckett gets out of the hospital, he realizes that people are chasing him, and they are shooting at him, and he has no idea who they are or why they're doing all this. One can certainly understand how it would be unsettling.

The police quickly prove untrustworthy, so Beckett gets it in his head that what he needs to do is get to the U.S. Embassy in Athens. It's important to set this goal, because one of the problems with on-the-run movies is always the question of where the on-the-run person is trying to get to, and what they think they're going to do when they arrive. Every obstacle course needs a finish line.

Regrettably, Beckett does run into the same problem as a lot of films with fun beginnings shrouded in mystery: It has to eventually answer the question of what the heck is going on. What they're going for here is (as critic Walter Chaw noted when we spoke about the film this week for Pop Culture Happy Hour) is the feeling of a larger conspiracy clamping down on Beckett, like you'd find in a 1970s paranoid thriller. But here, the more the film reveals about those menacing forces, the more it gets bogged down in a lot of only halfway considered material about Greek politics and American diplomacy. The final action set piece is fully ridiculous and poorly paced, particularly in contrast to the fairly straightforward chases of what happens earlier on, and by the end, the idea of Beckett as an everyman has been discarded in favor of the idea of Beckett as a superhero who manages some highly, highly unlikely feats of physics that the Beckett of a day or so earlier would never have even attempted.

The whole thing feels strangely conceived, and one hint about why might come from the press materials in which Filomarino says that what inspired this movie was other movies — other "manhunt" type films, only he wanted to try one where the protagonist was more of an ordinary person. It's not unusual to be inspired by other kinds of storytelling, obviously — that's the heart and soul of genre, and had they resisted the urge to make Beckett quite so bulletproof and quite so acrobatic, it might have paid off better.

But Beckett feels like perhaps the central story is underbaked because it originated not with an idea about a person, but with an idea about film, and then the task of building the story itself wasn't quite finished with the polish it needed. That might explain, too, the oddly inert supporting characters: Vicky Krieps shows up in an underdeveloped role as a local activist, for instance, and it's hard not to wish she had a lot more to do.

This kind of movie makes me think, I admit, of The Great British Baking Show . Sometimes, someone will make, say, a lemon cake. The the judges eat it and they announce, basically, "It's fine. I don't know that it's great, or that it's very exciting, but it's fine." This is not quite a ringing endorsement in the middle of a competition, but in fairness, what the person has made is still a lemon cake. And if you were in the mood for a lemon cake, then the fact that it's not the best lemon cake you've ever had may be something you would not focus on, were it sitting in front of you at home. "I believe I would eat that lemon cake" is a thought you may well find yourself having.

Beckett is a bit of a lemon cake.

On the plus side, it benefits from beautiful scenery as Beckett runs around Greece, up city streets and over mountains. It benefits from Washington having quite a natural regular-guy presence, in which he often seems overwhelmed, especially at the beginning. And it benefits from the audacious pile-up of challenges with which Beckett is faced.

But it could certainly be much better were it a tighter story with a more efficiently built puzzle at its center. There is a big difference, after all, between being able to forgive the flaws in a movie because it meets the basic requirements of its category and thinking there is no meaningful distinction between a good and bad movie like this, simply because it belongs to the popular genre known as the action thriller.

It could be a lot better. It could be a lot stronger as it approaches the finish. But there's something to be said for watching a guy hide in a car trunk and think, "For him, this is probably the best part of his day."

The Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast panel is Linda Holmes and Walter Chaw. The audio was produced and edited by Mike Katzif.

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Beckett (2021)

August 10, 2021 by Robert Kojder

Beckett , 2021.

Directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino. Starring John David Washington, Alicia Vikander, Vicky Krieps, Boyd Holbrook, Daphne Alexander, Panos Koronis, Leonardo Thimo, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos, Marc Marder, Andreas Marianos, and Maria Votti.

Following a tragic car accident in Greece, Beckett, an American tourist, finds himself at the center of a dangerous political conspiracy and on the run for his life.

Beckett ‘s opening 10 minutes or so contains quite a few strange scenes and dialogue exchanges that feel like they could somehow wind up as clues in the grander Greek conspiracy that comes to the forefront. It depicts the eponymous Beckett (played by John David Washington, who plays the role like he is stuck inside a variation of Tenet ) and his romantic partner April (Alicia Vikander, trying to make the most of limited screen time in arguably one of the most pointless roles of her career, which is a shame coming off such striking work also with a tiny amount of screen time in the recently released The Green Knight ) touring Greece and taking in the sights.

There’s random information about Greek mythology (notably, the Oracle of Zeus), the pair observe strangers and make up the backstory to what brought them on vacation (most of April’s scenarios tend to be imaginatively sleazy, which Beckett finds amusing), and some locals inform them of an incoming radical protest that will be congesting the public space while encouraging them to sleep in a different hotel. Beckett and April don’t set out until late at night, but after a quick phone call by April to ensure that the room is still available, they appear to be on track to make it there in time to check into the room. At least, that is until both of them become sleepy with Beckett losing control of the car, swerving off of the road and down a hill landing inside of a house where an injured Beckett observes a mysterious woman and teenage boy off in the distance before they leave.

From here, there are all sorts of questions, with the main one being if Beckett was drugged. That inquiry takes precedence because, and I don’t know about you, but the thought of a thriller being set in motion by someone accidentally swerving off a cliff while on vacation is preposterously silly and hard to take seriously, especially when it results in the death of the protagonist’s love interest. It’s possible Ambien was involved, so there is that, but for the most part, it’s pretty comical how practically nothing in the setup matters. It’s a means to fridge the main character’s love interest, giving him a little more motivation when eventually getting caught up in a deadly political game.

Nevertheless, after waking up in a local hospital, doctors explain to Beckett (with a combination of vague rhetoric and a language barrier) that April did not make it and her body will be sent home. A few days later, Beckett decides to check out the crash site before leaving, which is where he encounters an armed woman shooting first, and some crooked cops that are just as trigger-happy. What follows is a series of chases and evasive maneuvers with some stealth thrown in for good measure, as Beckett also comes across a pair of left-wing activists played by Vicki Krieps and Maria Votti) who are able to fill the character and us in on the ongoing political strife within Greece. Without going too much into detail, nationalists have kidnapped a politician’s son as retaliation for some progressive play he is going to make if he is elected (it’s not explained, serving as another element that doesn’t matter), and that the individuals trying to kill him represent that same terrorist group.

Directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino (a frequent collaborator of Luca Guadagnino, crafting a directorial debut here based on his own story with a script by Kevin A. Rice), it’s fine to build Beckett , both as a film and character, with minimalistic qualities and bare-bones storytelling emphasizing the thrills and urgent journey to safety (Beckett is trying to get to the US Embassy as fast as possible where an official played by Boyd Holbrook can hopefully offer answers and solutions). John David Washington also proves to be a good acting choice, appropriately putting on a clumsy and helpless physical performance (he’s constantly tripping or falling in believable ways while struggling in hand-to-hand combat), but there’s only so far a blank slate character can carry what is uninvolving political conspiracy drama with low-level excitement.

It’s actually surprising how straightforward Beckett is played (the few turns the story takes here are also somewhat predictable). However, to its credit, there is a sense of terrifying isolation watching a man run around Greece, unable to understand the language (the fact that there are no subtitles should allow viewers to relate), trying to piece together why he’s wanted dead and what the politicians are doing. It’s also only concerned with exploring those elements at face value without even bothering to flesh them out. Aside from a few strong action beats during the finale (there’s a tremendously perfect here), it also means most of Beckett is a drag to watch. Originally, Beckett was going to be titled Born to be Murdered (an infinitely more tantalizing title capable of generating intrigue) before Netflix bought the distribution rights, presumably changing the name to the identity of its bland protagonist as a way of acknowledging the boring piece they just purchased.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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Netflix’s Beckett Is a Leisurely Chase Thriller

The opening scenes of Beckett are so unlike the rest of Beckett that, were it not on Netflix, you might wonder if you accidentally sat on the remote and changed the channel to an entirely different movie. The dissonance feels intentional, if awkward. As his film hops from genre to genre, director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino seems to be working toward a comment on the nature of grief, guilt, and persistence. Unfortunately, the results can’t quite match the scale of his ambitions.

The story begins with an American couple on vacation in Greece. Beckett (John David Washington) and April (Alicia Vikander) are very much in love and able to shut out the rest of the world — including the political turbulence glimpsed occasionally on TVs in the cafés they visit. Their moments together are filmed with refreshing intimacy, and Vikander and Washington seem genuinely at ease around each other. One night, however, as the couple drives along a country road to the next hotel on their itinerary, Beckett falls asleep at the wheel and they go flying off a cliff. The car smashes into a house and April is killed instantly. As he scrambles out of the vehicle, Beckett glimpses a young, red-haired boy watching them from inside the house. Later, when he mentions the child to the police, they insist that the house was abandoned. Then, our distraught hero returns to the scene of the accident — not to find the kid, it seems, but to take his own life because of the grief now consuming him. Suddenly, the cops show up and start firing. And we’re off.

As Beckett morphs from romantic tragedy to man-on-the-run adventure to political thriller, much of the pressure of holding the movie together falls on Washington, whose character’s compelling bereavement is quickly replaced by pure survival instinct. The actor is a simpatico figure, to be sure — a step or two behind the action, more Jimmy Stewart than Cary Grant. But he needs something to do besides just, you know, run ; he’s not charismatic enough to rivet us with his very presence. And, alas, far too much of Beckett is devoted to our hero’s not-all-that-dramatic flight across the Greek countryside as he goes from house to house to bus to train.

By the time the second half rolls around and Beckett meets up with a pair of activists (Vicky Krieps and Maria Votti), the film begins to make the inevitable connection between his accident and the political turmoil around him. The movie seems to be going for a kind of Parallax View –style paranoia, as well as the high-pursuit drama of something like The Fugitive . But such classics captivate us with their ornate mysteries and procedural minutiae; no two scenes in those pictures tend to be alike. Beckett , by contrast, gives us so little information about what’s going on that all we’re left with is a guy running around and getting shot at, over and over again. It’s more Sisyphean than Hitchcockian.

And yet, director Filomarino is onto something here. The warm intimacy of the movie’s early scenes is replaced by such shocking brutality by the end that the violence feels like an emotional correlative, a blood ritual of sorts. Filomarino films both the opening and closing scenes with a real eye for the physicality of the moment, and in doing so he gives Beckett some necessary psychological shading. This man who wanted to kill himself has found cosmic purpose in the bodily mortification required to conclude his quest. Sadly, it’s too little, too late. That it all winds up clicking together by the end makes it doubly frustrating that the rest of Beckett drags so much.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Suspenseful Greece-set thriller; violent action, language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Order, truth, and justice can triumph over disorde

Beckett doesn't give up. At first it seems he's on

Lead character is Black. His race is never discuss

An accident involves a car flipping over repeatedl

Beckett and April are seen in bed together, talkin

"F--k," f--king," "f--ked," "Jesus f--king Christ,

Converse, BMW, other car brands. Greece as a touri

Beckett takes an Ambien and then considers taking

Parents need to know that Beckett has political intrigue, continuous violent action, and swearing. The political plot driving the action goes hand-in-hand with a love story that motivates the main character. An accident sparks the intrigue and involves a car flipping over repeatedly and crashing into a house,…

Positive Messages

Order, truth, and justice can triumph over disorder, dishonesty, and corruption when individuals and groups make politics personal and/or try to do the right thing.

Positive Role Models

Beckett doesn't give up. At first it seems he's only interested in self-preservation, but eventually it's apparent he's trying to do something good in order to give meaning to and overcome his guilt for a tragic accident. Characters who represent the law and governments are violent, corrupt, duplicitous. Several random people help Beckett with no expected benefit to themselves, including lots of young people and political activists.

Diverse Representations

Lead character is Black. His race is never discussed or highlighted, even though he's a foreigner in a country where no other Black people are seen on-screen. He's in a loving relationship with a White woman.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

An accident involves a car flipping over repeatedly and crashing into a house, killing one of its occupants who's found in a pool of blood. The other wakes up in a hospital with arm in cast, bruises. Beckett is pursued, attacked throughout the film. He's shot at repeatedly, punched, stabbed. He jumps out of houses, off cliffs, off the side of a multistory building onto the top of a moving car. He runs across train tracks as a train approaches, hurts people trying to hurt him, including tasing a man, hitting a man repeatedly with a pipe, shooting two different people. A child is said to have been kidnapped. A massive political protest turns violent, with police in riot gear, fights, gas, people vandalizing cars and streets. Lots of blood. A dead body in a morgue is shown. Beckett suffers panic attacks, seems to briefly consider overdosing on sedatives.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Beckett and April are seen in bed together, talking, kissing, initiating sex. He's not wearing a shirt and she's naked under the sheets. They make jokes about other people's possible "sex affairs."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"F--k," f--king," "f--ked," "Jesus f--king Christ," "s--t," "s--tting," "bulls--t," "hell," "goddamn," "piss," "screwed." There's some dialogue in Greek that's not translated or subtitled in the English version.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Converse, BMW, other car brands. Greece as a tourist destination.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Beckett takes an Ambien and then considers taking a handful of them. Adults smoke and drink at bars. The Greek liquor tsipouro is mentioned. A man drinks a glass of whiskey and offers one to Beckett, who turns it down because he's on medication.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Beckett has political intrigue, continuous violent action, and swearing. The political plot driving the action goes hand-in-hand with a love story that motivates the main character. An accident sparks the intrigue and involves a car flipping over repeatedly and crashing into a house, killing one of its occupants, who is found in a pool of blood. The other wakes up in a hospital with a cast on the arm and bruises. Beckett is pursued and attacked throughout the film. He's shot at repeatedly, punched, and stabbed. He jumps out of houses, off cliffs, and off the side of a multistory building onto the top of a moving car. He runs across train tracks as a train approaches, and he hurts people trying to hurt him, including tasing a man, hitting a man repeatedly with a pipe, and shooting two different people. A child is said to have been kidnapped. There's a lot of blood, a dead body is shown in a morgue, and Beckett also suffers panic attacks. He seems to briefly consider overdosing on sedatives. A massive political protest turns violent, with police in riot gear, fights, gas, and people vandalizing cars and streets. Several characters who represent the law and governments are violent, corrupt, and duplicitous, while other random people help Beckett with no expected benefit to themselves, including lots of young people and political activists. Beckett is Black and, though he appears to be the only Black person on-screen in the Greek setting, his race is not discussed or highlighted. There's some usage of alcohol, smoking, and medications. One scene shows a couple kissing in bed and initiating sex. Language includes "f--k," f--king," "f--ked," "Jesus f--king Christ," "s--t," "s--tting," "bulls--t," "hell," "goddamn," "piss," and "screwed." There's some dialogue in Greek that's not translated or subtitled in the English version. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say

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What's the Story?

At the start of BECKETT, couple Beckett ( John David Washington ) and April ( Alicia Vikander ) are on vacation in Greece when a car accident sends them flying off the road, killing April. When Beckett wakes up in a hospital, bereft, he walks back to the scene of the accident. There, two police officers begin shooting at him, sending him on the run through the mountains of Northern Greece. Unsure of exactly who is after him or why, he races toward Athens to try to escape and eventually to solve the mystery of why he's being pursued.

Is It Any Good?

This action-packed thriller aims to exploit the unexpected, offering a suspenseful watch with a unique combination of storyline, location, and actors. As such, viewers would be wise to read little and avoid spoilers to get the most out of the novelty of Beckett , which will diminish on repeat viewings. The film's Italian director and producer seem aware that this part of Europe is too often depicted on international screens as little more than a sunlit tourist destination, and they send Beckett scrambling over rocky cliffs and through rural villages far from Greece's iconic Mediterranean islands, on his way to a sprawling, monument-free Athens. Likewise, the decision not to translate or subtitle chunks of conversations between Greek characters adds to a feeling of "foreign-ness" and additional suspense for viewers who don't speak Greek.

The political backstory of this movie might feel complicated to some viewers, but anyone with a passing interest in European politics will recognize real-to-life themes, and the plot is painted in very broad strokes mostly as justification for the action. Choosing a Black actor for the lead role in a film with no other Black characters, despite a medley of nationalities and accents among secondary actors, might have been used to add layers to the characterization. But instead the film takes pains to avoid any treatment of race. When he considers overdosing on sedatives or suffers panic attacks, Beckett's everyman profile is reinforced, but the character's key emotions and Washington's performance here are mostly limited to fear, confusion, and pain.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what motivates the main character in Beckett . How does his motivation change over the course of the film? Did you understand or agree with his actions?

What aspects of Greek culture and geography are on display in this film? Where could you go for more information about Greece?

Why do you think the filmmakers opted not to translate or subtitle all of the conversations in Greek between characters? What effect does this have on viewers who don't speak Greek?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : August 13, 2021
• Cast : John David Washington , Alicia Vikander , Yorgos Pirpassopoulos
• Director : Ferdinando Cito Filomarino
• Inclusion Information : Black actors, Female actors
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Thriller
• Topics : Activism
• Run time : 108 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : February 17, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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More Like This

Beckett's John David Washington Carries the Entire Conspiracy Thriller

Even if everything in Beckett has been seen before in a conspiracy thriller, the John David Washington-starring film is still effective overall.

The thriller building blocks of Italian director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino's English-language debut  Beckett  are as unadorned as the movie's title. The film follows Beckett, an average guy witnessing something sinister that he wasn't supposed to see. He then has to evade nefarious forces out to kill him while seeking to uncover the truth about a shadowy conspiracy. But just because nearly everything in Beckett has been seen before doesn't mean that it isn't effective. Filomarino and star John David Washington deliver a solid and occasionally dry thriller.

Washington's Beckett is on vacation in Greece with his girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander). They're traveling through the countryside after abandoning their plans to remain in Athens, where a massive political protest is planned right outside the hotel where they were staying. The movie opens with them in bed together, already making up after a brief argument, and their relationship is so blissful that it's obvious something terrible is about to happen. "No one knows where we are," April says, which is never a good thing for a character to say.

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Washington and Vikander have appealing romantic chemistry, and Filomarino and screenwriter Kevin A. Rice take their time establishing the deep connection between Beckett and April. Beckett's shock and heartbreak are clear when he and April get into a car accident late at night, and April is thrown from the car and killed. While he's struggling to free himself, Beckett spots a young red-haired boy who's quickly hidden by an adult woman.

After Beckett is rescued by local authorities, he's told that the house his car crashed into has been abandoned for years. It's impossible for him to have seen anyone. Overcome with grief, he walks back to the scene of the accident, carrying a bottle of pills with the apparent intention of killing himself over his guilt at falling asleep at the wheel. But he's ironically shaken from his internal thoughts of suicide by more immediate external violence. Both the seemingly helpful police detective (Panos Koronis) and a mysterious woman start shooting at him.

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It takes about half an hour for Filomarino to put those pieces in place, but, after that point, the movie rarely lets up. Beckett barely stays one step ahead of his pursuers, while trying to figure out why he's suddenly become a target. Other characters filter in and out for a few scenes at a time, but the entire film really rests on Washington's shoulders. After his lead performance in Tenet , he once again proves up to the task of carrying an action movie. Filomarino balances the chase scenes and shootouts with downtime for Beckett to deal with the trauma of losing April. While those moments don't always carry the intended emotional weight, at least they show the character as human -- something that too many action thrillers lose sight of.

As he makes his way through the unfamiliar countryside, Beckett encounters various helpful strangers, from a married beekeeping couple to a bus full of tourists. Eventually, he meets up with German activist Lena (Vicky Krieps), who explains that the nephew of a popular opposition politician has been kidnapped in what Lena and her group believe is an effort to shut down protests against austerity measures. Beckett is caught in the middle of this political maneuvering. Despite those trappings, Filomarino isn't delivering a political statement, and the movie remains focused on action and suspense over social commentary.

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Still, Filomarino makes good use of the setting, showing how Beckett is always out of his element even when he's not directly in danger. Beckett doesn't speak Greek and he's not a trained military operative or a police officer. He's just a software salesman on vacation, and while he exhibits some improbable action heroics, he's also frequently injured and slowed down. He's closer to John McClane in the original Die Hard than to the McClane of the Die Hard sequels. Filomarino, who's worked with Luca Guadagnino on several movies, is clearly also influenced by films older than Die Hard , particularly Alfred Hitchcock's wrong-place-wrong-time thrillers like North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much .

Beckett never reaches the level of Hitchcock or Die Hard , though, and it starts to drag toward the end, especially after the mystery is essentially solved. Although Koronis makes for a menacing adversary, he's not really a central villain, leaving Beckett without a primary antagonist to balance out the story. Narcos ' Boyd Holbrook shows up in the final act as an American diplomat with ulterior motives, but his presence is too subdued to give the movie the boost it needs. Despite those flaws, Beckett is always engaging and grounded in Washington's gritty performance with a plot that, like its protagonist, never stops moving.

Beckett premieres Friday, August 13 on Netflix.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Beckett’ on Netflix, a Solid Hitchcock-Style Wrong-Man Thriller Starring John David Washington

Where to stream:.

• Stream It Or Skip It

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Stream it or skip it: ‘in limbo’ on hulu, an australian sitcom with a message about loss and loving what you have, stream it or skip it: 'interview with the vampire' season 2 on amc, where louis and claudia go in search of fellow vampires in post-wwii europe, stream it or skip it: 'blood of zeus' season 2 on netflix, another fantastic helping of the same gory action anime.

Netflix thriller Beckett lines up some serious burgeoning talent in director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino — a protege of sorts of Luca Guadagnino — star John David “Son of Denzel” Washington and supporting stars Alicia Vikander and Vicky Krieps (whose career has been shockingly low-profile since Phantom Thread ). The film digs into some heavy Wrong Man tropes as Washington’s character scampers and limps and clambers through rural and urban Greece; now let’s see if any of it sticks or if it just zips on by us.

BECKETT : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Beckett (Washington) and April (Vikander) are spooning. They seem to have had a tiff but are past the make-up sex part of the fight, and are ready for round two, so their vacation in Greece isn’t ruined. But the scenery is, as they sightsee in a mist-shrouded rural locale where ancient people once lived, then dine at a restaurant, where they make eyes at each other and chat and allow us into their hearts a little bit. They had been staying in Athens, but the onset of noisy political protests prompted them to find a place to stay outside the city, and they’re driving along a dark country road at night and April dozes off and then so does Beckett and the car skids and tumbles down an embankment and flips over and smashes through the wall of a house.

Bleary, Beckett crawls from the wreck, sees April laying in a pool of blood, spots a redheaded boy and then blacks out. He awakens in a hospital. The language barrier is a problem. April is dead; so much for this being a Vikander movie. He answers a cop’s probing questions. The cop says nobody was living in the house — curious, because Beckett saw someone. He drags his arm in a cast and his guilt out to the crash site and considers swallowing his entire allotment of Ambien when a woman fires bullets at him, like from a gun. What gives? He runs; a bullet rips through his upper arm. The probing cop? Also shooting at him. Something’s not right.

Good thing Beckett’s willing to do some stupid shit, like leap off a not-too-tall-but-tall-enough cliff, to avoid being killed. He makes his way through the countryside, comes across a trio of kind hunters who help him, a pair of even more kind beekeepers, and eventually the kindest of all, a couple of activists involved with the aforementioned protests. The activists are putting up posters bearing the visage of the redheaded boy — yes, the same redheaded boy, now officially The Redheaded Boy — who’s the kidnapped nephew of a leftist political leader. Yes: THINKY GUY EMOJI. No wonder the bad guys are so intent on finding Beckett, who keeps being found, perhaps inexplicably, if you think about it too much. But it helps that he’s also remarkably adept at escaping. Not bad for a software salesman from the States, eh?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Beckett is The Fugitive run through a Hitchcock filter — think North by Northwest — and with the unlikely-hero-isms of Die Hard protagonist John McClane.

Performance Worth Watching: Washington is capably earnest here, and although he pounds on one of his attackers until highly convincing strings of drool hang from his foaming mouth, the character’s regular-guy-finds-his-heroic/survivalist-streak arc is unexceptional, boilerplate stuff. It’s Krieps, as one of the activists, who makes the most of her limited screen time, her character showing a compassionate streak that overrides some of the plot’s implausibilities (such as, why should anyone believe this guy isn’t a nut?).

Memorable Dialogue: “I’m having a love attack,” Beckett says to April as they make goo-goo eyes at the dinner table, which sure sounds like a portent of tragedy

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: If Beckett ’s plot is a piece of fabric, it’s stretched taut for the first half and starts coming apart at the seams in the second. I guess Beckett is sincere enough in his pleadings that people believe he’s the victim of an eyeroller of a conspiracy, and Filomarino — who developed the story, scripted by Kevin A. Rice — layers in some flimsy political implications that give the film the illusion of ambition. The director maybe wants to dig into the State of Things, but seems tentative; the movie would probably be better as a stripped-down B-movie thriller, delivered with enough of a nudge and a wink to better suspend our disbelief.

But those stripped-down B-movie thriller elements work just well enough that my criticisms aren’t dealbreakers. It’s not a breathless pursuit, but a reasonably paced one, drawn out to generate suspense rather than an artificial sense of uptempo excitement. I was charmed by its adherence to foot chases; it noticeably avoids the stuff of screeching car tires and other tiresome cliches, and there’s a slyly funny moment in which Beckett tries to hijack a civilian’s moped, but loses the fight. It’s also amusing how Beckett gets more wounded and bandaged as the movie progresses and he limps and hobbles and sucks up the pain, his handicap escalating and his adrenaline coursing faster as he eludes the bad guys.

Despite her why-bother role, Vikander finds enough intimate chemistry with Washington for Beckett’s broken heart to resonate throughout the film, and Krieps’ character work is strong even though the screenplay clearly isn’t all that interested in her. There’s enough of a sentimental streak to go with the palpable paranoia and who-can-he-trust tension to keep the film afloat. I don’t think I ever truly bought what was happening, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Beckett boasts just enough excitement and suspense to overcome its flaws and make it worth a watch.

Will you stream or skip the Hitchcockian thriller #Beckett on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) August 15, 2021

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba .

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Beckett review: Netflix thriller is an adequate if uninspired Greek escape

In these tumultuous times, we can still, as always, rely on the certainties of death, taxes, and mediocre Netflix original movies. One of the latest, Beckett , is a thriller in the mold of many of the streamer's offerings: recognizable names and competent filmmaking yielding basically adequate entertainment.

Beckett ( John David Washington ) and his girlfriend April ( Alicia Vikander ) are on vacation in Greece when they get into a terrible accident, leaving Beckett alone and stranded in a country where he doesn't speak the language. He slowly realizes, however, that the accident was even worse than he understood — it landed him in the wrong place at a very wrong time, and he now has a target on his back because of it. As he journeys through the countryside to get to the American embassy in Athens, dodging those who would have him killed along the way, he learns about the fraught political landscape that might explain the situation in which he finds himself.

Directed by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, a frequent collaborator of Luca Guadagnino (who produced), the film makes intelligent use of its European setting, fruitfully mining the Greek scenery for beauty as well as menace. The film's greatest gift, though, has to be the prompt separation of Washington and Vikander, two stars of astonishing beauty and an even more astonishing lack of chemistry. The excruciating first 10 minutes consist primarily of the pair supposedly being romantic, and that sequence is much harder to survive, as a viewer, than any of the threats to Beckett's mortality that follow. This is not the fault of the actors so much as it is of Kevin A. Rice's screenplay, which mercifully transitions out of flirtations and into escape mode, where everyone involved seems much more at ease, fairly quickly.

The conspiracy that Beckett gets pulled into is also pretty thin, but the thrills of watching him fight for his life are the real reason we're here anyway, and those are presented engagingly enough. There isn't much to Beckett, as a character — Vicky Krieps delivers the film's most genuine performance, as an activist he encounters — but Washington has presence to spare and carries the film with ease. It's a very physical performance, all jumping off cliffs and off trains and off parking structures, and while Beckett's continued ability to function is not entirely believable (as is standard of the genre), Washington palpably carries his many injuries, contributing effectively to the growing tension.

The film will soon be eclipsed as a credit on the rising star's growing resume, and probably just as quickly be kind of forgotten by most people who watch it. If you're looking for a new movie to put on this weekend, though, it's perfectly serviceable. Netflix is a service, after all. Grade: C

Related content:

• John David Washington is a tourist on the run in Netflix's scenic Beckett trailer
• John David Washington teases his tense Greek thriller Beckett

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Beckett movie review: John David Washington blazes his own trail in breakneck Netflix thriller

Beckett movie review: john david washington makes for a compelling everyman in director ferdinando cito filomarino's breakneck netflix thriller..

Beckett Director - Ferdinando Cito Filomarino Cast - John David Washington, Boyd Holbrook, Vicky Krieps, Alicia Vikander

Beckett, the new Netflix film starring John David Washington , is based on a fairly standard premise, but made with uncommon flair. Directed by Luca Guadagnino’s protege Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, Beckett might seem like a run-of-the-mill man-on-the-run thriller, but like its protagonist, it evolves as it goes along — always inventive, but never implausible.

On vacation in Greece with his girlfriend April ( Alicia Vikander ), Beckett comes across as the less-adventurous of the two. When April suggests deviating from a prescribed sightseeing route, he is hesitant. This is a fiendishly clever trick that Filomarino frequently employs to communicate crucial information about the character. Because the very nature of the plot is restrictive, in the sense that the film can’t rely on traditional techniques like flashbacks to flesh the protagonist out a little, it depends on throwaway exchanges such as this to get the job done. Having seen Beckett display such reluctance to challenge something as trivial as a tourist expedition, two things are established: one, he’s the kind of person who abides by rules, and two, he isn’t the most decisive dude out there.

Watch the Beckett trailer here:

Having established these details in the opening scenes, Filomarino sets his audience up for what Quentin Tarantino would describe as ‘subversion on a massive level’ — perhaps one of the most difficult storytelling feats to pull off. Driving to their next destination that night, an exhausted Beckett falls asleep at the wheel, sending their car careening off the Greek hillside into a hut. April is killed instantly, and Beckett wakes up some time later in a village hospital, with a local cop lurking sinisterly outside his room.

He is informed about April’s tragic death, and guilt-ridden beyond belief, Beckett decides to walk down to the accident site. And this is when things begin to get weird. While he’s having a moment to himself, a couple of cops pull up and begin shooting at him. He flees, thus beginning a journey that’ll take him across the Greek countryside and deposit him, two hours later, bang in the middle of a political rally in Athens.

Fans of Alfred Hitchcock would immediately recall The 39 Steps and North by Northwest. There’s no shame in stealing from the best, and Beckett has an undeniable similarity to the structure, as well as the tone of those films. Filomarino, who appears to be just as influenced by Hitch as he is by Guadagnino (he's even borrowed his mentor’s regular cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom , and editor Walter Fasano), admirably never chooses the path of least resistance.

For instance, Beckett isn’t separated from civilisation in his epic quest. He runs into people every few minutes. Each encounter with a fellow human being releases the tension in the plot — you expect him to receive some form of assistance, and usually, he does — but that also puts the ball back in the film’s court. Lost momentum, deliberate as it is, must be regained.

And regain it Filomarino does. Just when you think that the finish line is in sight — Beckett’s ultimate goal, understandably, is to find his way to the American embassy in Athens — it is revealed that he has stumbled upon a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top. And suddenly, the film transforms into a grand parable about global politics, and the common man’s place in it.

Beckett learns the hard way — rather on-brand for the film — that people like him can’t rely on figures of authority or elected representatives; but they can turn to their fellow man for help. Just as important as that early scene with April is another one in the middle of the movie. When he’s cornered by a corrupt cop who tells him that someone ratted him out, Beckett’s first reaction is to ask the cop if he hurt them. That one throwaway line reveals a lot more about him than pages worth of dialogue could’ve — it makes him instantly endearing, and someone worth rooting for.

This exchange happens in the film’s standout set-piece. There’s no action to speak of; it involves only two characters, and they’re both largely immobile. But the sort of suspense that Filomarino is able to generate is impressive. He also makes the astute decision to leave the Greek dialogue unsubtitled, ensuring that it is, indeed, all Greek to both Beckett and us.

Also read: Malcolm & Marie movie review: Zendaya and John David Washington are mesmerising in incendiary new Netflix film

It is vital, in movies such as this, for the protagonist to maintain an everyman persona — if they’re too skilled, you’ll end up losing the audience. Beckett, for the most part, adheres to this unwritten law. It is only in the film’s final scene that it sort of jumps the shark and bares its soul, simultaneousl. As Mukdeeprom’s camera moves in for a close-up of Washington’s shell-shocked face, you understand, in a moment of clarity, what Beckett was motivated by all this while. It’s quite something.

Follow @htshowbiz for more The author tweets @RohanNaahar

Rohan Naahar watches movies for Hindustan Times. He works on the online desk. ...view detail

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Beckett (2021)

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