Mark Reviews Movies: BECKETT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 12, 2021

Beckett serves as a reminder that a thriller doesn't need an overly clever gimmick, some spectacular visual effects, several over-the-top stunts, and/or plenty of stylized action sequences in order to succeed. Here, screenwriter Kevin A. Rice and director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino return to the sort of stripped-to-the-basics approach that defined thrillers for decades.

An ordinary person, with no unique or special skills or training, finds himself chased and hunted for reasons he does not understand. The plot is that simple, but the film's technique and performances are far from simplistic.

The only thing coming close to a conceit here is that our eponymous hero, played by John David Washington, is on vacation in Greece when the pursuit of him begins. Beckett doesn't know the geography—either the terrain or where anything is in relation to where he is and where he wants to go—or the language—although at least a good number of tentative allies or definitive foes know English—or even, in retrospect and with a little bit of knowledge, the fairly obvious reason that an increasing number of people want him dead—not that he could possess any of that information when all of this begins.

Those are the challenges and obstacles, as Beckett tries to escape, determine how to get out of this deadly predicament, figure out the mystery of why he's being hunted, and, finally, decide what he's going to do and what kind of person he really is. The key reasons Rice's screenplay succeeds are that it never lets the drip-drip of exposition get in the way of the story's sense of dreadful, helpless suspense and that it doesn't allow the character to be overshadowed by the constant assault of trials, barriers, and enemies in his way.

Everything seems fine enough at the start. Beckett and his girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander) have abandoned Athens, on account of a political rally/protest that's scheduled in a couple days (The story is set during the earlier stages of the country's economic and debt crises, as proved by a telling portrait in the third act), for a tour of quieter countryside villages. They've had a bit of a fight but are working through it—enjoying the drives, the walks through ancient ruins, and sipping coffee at local cafés.

Driving to their next stop in the middle of the night, April falls asleep in the passenger seat, and Beckett starts dozing himself. He awakens, too late, to the car swerving off the road, going over the edge of a drop, and crashing into a house farther down the hill.

Beckett comes to with the sight of a woman and a boy in front of him—the blonde woman pulling the child away from the scene. He scrambles out of the overturned car and, favoring his unbroken right arm, crawls to the spot where April has landed, after being thrown through the windshield. She's dead.

The police offer condolences in the hospital and probe Beckett with questions at the station. One English-speaking cop (played by Marc Marder) dismisses Beckett's claim that a woman and child were in the house. Meanwhile, Beckett evades his part in the accident, even with April's father over the phone, but soon enough, none of that matters. Upon returning to the scene of the fatal accident, Beckett finds himself being shot at by the blonde stranger (played by Lena Kitsopoulou) and the cop who doubted the woman's existence.

One should be able to predict the general flow of this story. Beckett runs, attempts to get help, finds himself confronting the woman or the cop or some other previously unknown foe, and keeps running, with some enemy or enemies always on his tail and closer—ever closer—toward the truth behind his situation. The reason for the chase is smart, having to do with the political climate of Greece at the time and a conspiracy with vastly spreading and grasping tentacles of national and international intrigue. It's also, in an even smarter way, almost irrelevant to the actual point of the film.

That point is, at its foundation, to watch this man—physically injured, emotionally damaged, and psychologically fraught—use his wits, struggle with his various shortcomings (He's hurt, yes, but also—and quite pointedly—a bit of a coward, if his evasion of responsibility in the accident is any indication), and navigate a series of unfamiliar locales in his trek to the U.S. embassy back in Athens. The cop and the blonde are always following Beckett. Some people help him, including a pair of political activists (played by Vicky Krieps and Daphne Alexander) who get Beckett's mind heading in the correct direction about the reason he's being hunted. The chase continues—up perilous hills, through nature and out-of-the-way houses, within the tight quarters of a train compartment, across the streets and alleys and out-of-sight lots of Athens.

Cito Filomarino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom are clever in the ways they use the camera—what they show us, in the background looking toward Beckett or from the perspective of watchers of our unaware protagonist in the backdrop, and what they don't, in sounds of violence or chaos as Beckett keeps running, and what we briefly see, in a man reaching toward something near his shoe. Washington, playing a guy reduced to survival instincts and self-preservation tactics, makes for a sympathetic-enough "wrong man," in the Hitchcockian sense. There's also a bit more to this character, especially when, why, and how he decides to do something right, beyond himself and his survival.

Simplicity is often dismissed or shunned, but when it works, it works. Beckett works.

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