Beckett review: Netflix’s wrong man thriller stars the wrong man for the job

The setting of Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s Netflix thriller, Beckett, it is tempting, even exciting. BeckettBeginning Y Malcolm and Marie star John David Washington) wakes up in bed, covering for his girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander). They are enjoying their vacation in Athens, gazing at the stony ruins and misty mountains that dot the exotic place. But they hear the rumor of an upcoming protest that will tone down their sunny spot. On his trip to a different and quieter resort in the mountains, Beckett falls asleep and crashes his car into a house. Beckett emerges from the accident with a broken arm, but April dies.

Beckett it bites off much more than it can chew. After the accident, Beckett tells police that he saw a red-haired boy in the house he collided with. He doesn’t know it, but this child’s face is plastered all over Greece. He is the kidnapped nephew of left-wing politician Karras (Yorgos Pirpassopoulos), who is building a coalition to reverse the austerity measures imposed on Greece by the European Union. His strategy has displeased the country’s far-right fascists. However, the film never reveals anything more about these opposing sides, which keeps viewers at a distance, unable to fully engage with the film’s broader political conflict.

Beckett It is the first film in English by the Italian director. It involves an unwitting protagonist in Greece’s internal political conflict, sending him on the run from two nameless murderers (Panos Koronis and Lena Kitsopoulou) posing as policemen. Kevin A. Rice’s script follows in the footsteps of similar stories from the wrong men: Alfred Hitchcock The 39 Steps, By Andrew Davis The fugitiveetc., stories about people forced to flee after being sucked into larger conspiracies. This film, sadly, does not live up to the quality of its influences. Filomarino’s Beckett he lacks urgency, wit, and a lead actor capable of gathering his underwritten themes.

Rice’s script is bloated but underdeveloped as she tries to balance Beckett’s duel with her fight for survival. At every step, he cries at the thought of his dead girlfriend. But the movie barely spends prep time with any of them, save for their fleeting sightseeing tour. And Beckett doesn’t share any memories about her to let viewers know of her loss. It focuses on the hunt for fake cops, who hope to close the loose end that Beckett represents before he can reach the US embassy, ​​where US agent Tynan (Boyd Holbrook) awaits him. The obstacles posed by these killers are not entirely conspicuous, because Beckett overcomes them too easily.

Worse still, the character as written is one-dimensional, giving Washington little to work with. But Washington doesn’t contribute much either. He’s overshadowed by his co-stars, flat, and devoid of charisma. Vikander only appears in the first few minutes of the film. In that short time, she is a far more generous stage partner than her counterpart, offering sneaky glances and maneuvering the emotionally charged cement block of Washington. Not only does Beckett miss her when she leaves, the public will likely miss her presence as well.

Vicky Krieps (Phantom thread) as Lena, one of two left-wing activists helping Beckett get to the US embassy, ​​also overshadows Washington. Krieps’ emotional face offers a sense of warmth that the script cannot. The movie barely gives up anything about her subscribed character, but it 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 strives to introduce a similar rank to his character. You need charisma to pull off a wrong man thriller, a reason to support the good guy beyond the narrative that says we should. Washington doesn’t have that.

And it never has. He appears physically lost, as if a camera has never been pointed at him. (Watch Beginning.) Whenever he cries, he has a habit, seen in Malcolm and Marie, from rolling your eyes to find tears. And his blank stare doesn’t draw viewers into his worldview. (Watch Beginning again. Believe it or not.) He leaves viewers at a perpetual distance, always watching him react instead of inhabiting their emotions. All these shortcomings come back to bite you here.

While the lead actor is expected to bear most of the responsibility when a movie lacks charisma or personal appeal, especially a wrong man movie, it would be unfair to blame just Washington for this mistake. Beckett evades his pursuers across sheer cliffs, a graffiti-painted train, and into the trunk of a car. But all of these scenarios feel like they’ve been hastily captured and don’t maximize the inherent intrigue of their surroundings. Why set a movie in Greece if you’re going to make its exotic appeal so generic? Filomarino doesn’t need to display tourist traps, but he doesn’t find an interesting hole in the wall either. Even the extras are boring and seemingly disconnected. Washington, a black man, runs through the streets in handcuffs, but no one blinks.

Sometimes, it seems that Filomarino wants to incorporate race into history. But the villains’ intentions aren’t just mysterious, they’re frustratingly opaque. The Greek dialogue is not translated in the subtitles, so when the villains talk about Beckett, we don’t know how they are describing it to each other. However, at different times, we hear his pursuers yelling at the crowd that they are looking for a black man. When Beckett arrives at the American embassy, ​​he sees a photo of Obama. It is as if Filomarino knew the subtext of an African American being hunted by the police in a foreign country, but did not have the narrative or visual vocabulary to unravel his intentions.

The only Beckett The crew member who seems to understand the vibe a wrong man movie needs is composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (The last Emperor Y Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence), whose screeching strings and a messy combination of cymbals and timpani create anxiety. The other moving parts are too lacking to maintain the desired suspense, to the point where even a protest turns ugly and Beckett jumping off a building to stop a moving car is not enough to resurrect the film. BeckettThe lead actor is a boring actor who’s spinning a duller web, and he’s not the right man to deliver this flawed and unruly plot.

Beckett debuts on Netflix on August 13.