Beckett movie review: John David Washington tries really hard to save this film, but it remains a complete misfire-Entertainment News , Firstpost

Fernando Cito Filomarino’s Beckett begins in the middle. The first line of dialogue one hears in the film is that of Beckett (John David Washington) apologising to his partner, April (Alicia Vikander) during an early morning snuggle. One gets a sense that they had fought the night before, indicating they’ve been together for a while. Cito Filomarino drops us right in the midst of these two lovers vacationing in the mountains of Northern Greece, as we find out soon after.

This is the second time in two weeks, after The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, where a Hollywood film centres its action around the crisis in Greece. Even though, unlike the Ryan Reynold-starrer, Beckett doesn’t immediately fill you in. The political unrest in Athens trickles down slowly into the American couple’s idyllic vacation in the mountains. Beckett and April are sitting in a cafe holding hands and whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears, as a news channel in the background overlooks the main square in Athens being prepped for a protest rally. April tells Beckett that they were supposed to be staying in a hotel overlooking the main square, when they spontaneously made their way to the mountains.

It’s a strange experience, watching Beckett, especially if one’s going in completely blind. The first 10 mins suggest it’s one of those intense European couple dramas featuring Hollywood stars hell-bent on showcasing they’re ‘actors’. Then, there’s a car crash. The viewer might sense elements of a film about survivor’s guilt, or a man dealing with unfathomable grief. And when the viewer allows the film to breathe and find its legs, it takes a sharp left and goes in an entirely different direction. Beckett becomes a pure ‘man-on-the-run’ genre film from hereon.

It’s obviously unexpected, but as a viewer, you’re on-board because the film shifts gears from being a moody, inward-looking relationship story about an American couple, to a man trying to escape assailants (local cops from around where his car crashed) and finding his way to the American embassy. The pace picks up, Beckett’s paranoia fills the screen as he can’t help but constantly look over his shoulder. He crosses streams, walks for miles, hitches rides with ‘activists’, all with a fractured left hand. Being a black man with a bright blue plaster in a largely white country, makes him easy to spot. And yet, Washington doesn’t quite fit the everyman mould.

Looking at his performance, especially in the robust action scenes, it’s hard not to be reminded of Washington’s role in last year’s Tenet, where he took part in many similar combat sequences.

He runs and he runs… atop the hill, jumping from ledges, taking desperate measures to survive. But the stunt work never lacks finesse, hardly making him seem like the same American tourist he played in the beginning of the film. It obviously isn’t pristine like The Matrix, but it also isn’t sloppy like an everyman. Washington’s character fights cops, possible intelligence assets, and even spies, and makes it out of every single one of those situations. He survives two car crashes. If he ran with a little more purpose, someone might just call him Ethan Hunt.

There’s also a dissimilar physicality to Washington’s performances harking back to his two most recent performances in Tenet and Malcolm & Marie, where he grunts, tries and gives it his all. And yet, the character never comes to life. All we see is John David Washington trying. Really hard.

It is in the third act that Beckett completely goes off the rails. What started out as an intimate film, morphed into a genre film within the first fifteen minutes, starts to look like a fan-made Homeland episode around an international conspiracy with an American at the centre of it all. Neither does it remain a dumb Tony Scott actioner, neither does it have the heft for commentary on its (possibly) anti-Americanisms in the climax.

Beckett is reminiscent of another misfire from last year, Oliver Assayas’ Wasp Network (also distributed by Netflix). If prestige directors and a good looking cast would have been enough then Hillbilly Elegy would have been liked, and Amy Adams would have won an Oscar. John David Washington is about to find it out the hard way.