BECKETT : Monday 16th August 2021

With Greater Sydney still in COVID lockdown, and as a result all cinema's closed until 28th August at least now, I've been reviewing over the last few weeks some the latest feature films released recently onto Netflix. One such film that I watched from the comfort of my own home this week is the action thriller 'BECKETT' Written and Directed by the Italian filmmaker Ferdinando Cito Filomarino in only his second feature film outing following the biographical drama film 'Antonia' in 2015, although he did serve as Second Unit Director on 'A Bigger Splash' in 2015, 'Call Me by Your Name' in 2017 and 'Suspiria' in 2018. Each of these three films incidentally were Directed by Luca Guadagnino who also Co-Produces on 'Beckett'. This film saw its World Premier screening at the Locarno Film Festival on 4th August and was released onto Netflix on 13th of this month, and has so far generated mixed or average Reviews. 

We are first introduced to Beckett (John David Washington), and his girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander) in bed in an Athens hotel room. From the discussions they had a fight the night before but have since 'kissed' and made up. April draws a tiny love heart with a Sharpie on Beckett's palm. They intend to leave Athens due to a political rally set to take place in the square overlooked by their hotel room, which it is reported is going to be big, noisy and could potentially turn violent. We then see the happy couple enjoying some of the sights and scenes that ancient Greece has to be offer. While driving to their hotel later that night, with April dozing in the passenger seat, Beckett falls asleep at the wheel and sends their car crashing over an embankment and down into a nearby house. The car comes to rest on its roof, with Beckett dangling upside down restrained by his seat belt, while April was flung through the windscreen not wearing a belt. As Beckett is coming to his senses, hanging upside down and peering through the shattered windscreen, he sees a red-headed child hurried out of the room by a woman. He clambers out of the car and sees that April is lying dead on the ground having suffered a serious head wound. 

Sometime later he wakes up in a hospital room with his arm in plaster. Later while being questioned by the Police, he is told that it was lucky the house was abandoned and empty. He tells the English-speaking, Police Officer Xenakis (Panos Koronis) that the house was occupied and that he saw a red-headed boy. After leaving the Police Station he walks the four kilometres to the scene of the accident with the intention of killing himself by ingesting April's bottle of sleeping pills. Having taken one, and just about to swallow the remaining contents, a blonde woman (Lena Kitsopoulou) stood outside the building starts shooting at him. Hiding behind a bush, Xenakis appears and calls out to him, saying there has been a mistake, to come out and that he'll be safe. As soon as he raises himself, the blonde woman shoots him in the upper arm. He makes a dash for it as both the woman, and Xenakis shoot at him and give chase. He jumps off the edge of a cliff into a tree some distance below, lands roughly on the rock strewn ground and makes his getaway. 

Beckett that night takes refuge in an old abandoned wreck of a truck and is awakened by hunters the next morning. Beckett needs access to a phone and so one of the older huntsmen takes Beckett to his house to attend to his wound. While recounting his story, there is suddenly a knock at the door. The old hunter goes to the door and Xenakis and the blonde woman force their way in attacking and beating the old man. Beckett jumps out of a rear upper window and escapes. He comes across a couple of beekeepers who lend him a phone. He calls the US embassy in Athens, and explains his situation. They tell him they can come to get him the next day, and so Beckett tells them he will come to them instead because it will be quicker. Athens is about a five hour car journey away, so he cadges a lift on a school field trip bus to take him to the nearest train station. Boarding the train and taking a window seat, he fails to notice Xenakis walk past the window and board his carriage. When Xenakis tries to detain him, Beckett pulls on the train’s emergency brake and in the ensuing struggle, Xenakis shoots himself in the foot and Beckett again flees the scene.

In town, Beckett notices numerous posters being pasted to walls of the red-headed boy being put up by two female activists, an American Lena (Vicky Krieps) and a Greek woman Eleni (Maria Votti). They tell Beckett that the boy is the kidnapped son of a liberal politician who has been held by a far-right organisation, called Sunrise. They conceal Beckett in the trunk of their car and drive him to Athens, during which time he tells them his story, to which Lena is more trusting that Eleni. Beckett leaves the car to avoid a Police roadblock and having arrived in Athens takes a train to get closer to the US Embassy. While trying to avoid the Police at the subway station, he is attacked by a man with a knife and slashed across the forearm. Beckett manages to escape across the rail tracks and is helped directly to the embassy by two young men. After having his wounds dressed and a change of clothes, he meets with Tynan (Boyd Holbrook) who tells him that they located April's body and that they have had it shipped there. He is then taken to the morgue to view her body, and further told that the Embassy have called her parents to break the news of their daughter's death. 

Tynan offers to take Beckett to an honest local cop to sort things out so that he can be extradited back to the US. At first Beckett is reluctant to leave the safe harbour of the Embassy, but is convinced to go by Tynan. They drive down various side roads and into a dodgy looking neighbourhood and into a quiet lot where is parked a number of trucks. Slowing down Tynan pulls out his taser and tries to zap Beckett. Beckett instead was able to turn the taser on Tynan and escape after the car crashes into the back of a truck. 

Beckett goes to where the activists told him they were headed, under the 'clasped hands' to try and warn them. Tynan has by now shaken off the effect of the taser stun and arrives with the Police and chases Beckett into the political rally. As violence mounts and clashes with riot Police unfold, shots ring out and Beckett runs into the basement of small shopping precinct. There he is confronted by Tynan, armed with a gun, who tells him the liberal politician has just be shot and killed, that his case of being the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time is now moot and he's free to get on a plane back to the US. Becket fights him, gains the upper hand and knocks him out. 

Tynan goes back up the streets where the riot is in full swing and spots the blonde woman who shot him. He follows her to a parking garage, where she meets up with Xenakis, on the top floor. Before they can escape, Beckett shoots the cop in the hand and forcibly drags the blonde woman out of the car window. He is shot at close range in his side, but he still manages to bash her head against the concrete knocking her out. By now Xenakis has driven off making an exit out of the car park, with the muffled sound of someone banging on the roof of the car boot from the inside. Lena arrives having chased after Beckett chasing down the blonde woman. As Xenakis car exits the parking garage, Beckett launches himself onto the car from the top of the parking lot, landing squarely on the windscreen. He wrestles with Xenakis who drives the car into another coming to an abrupt halt. He knocks out Xenakis, as Lena arrives and passers by pull the boy from the boot. Beckett is being consoled by Lena as he looks down at his palm at the now faded heart April drew on his hand, saying mournfully how he should have died.

Watching Beckett survive a horrific car crash, get shot twice, stabbed, punched, kicked, hurl himself off a cliff top, and, off the roof of a multi-storey car park onto a moving car below, run, run and then keep running, and evade being captured more times than I can recall all amounts to just how much beating can a man withstand in a 24 hour period, and still come out on top? This guys is on an emotional and physical roller coaster that knows no bounds and stretches the credibility to the very limit. The political machinations of the film are underdeveloped, we know very little of Beckett's back story and so its hard to feel invested in the characters or the plot for that matter. Put simply, it's a man-on-the-run thriller that fails to elevate itself above the many other similar films in the same genre, and when the action comes it's all too pedestrian.

'Beckett' warrants two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-