The setup for Ferdinando Cito Filomarino’s Netflix suspense flick, Beckettis tempting, even exciting. Beckett (principle and Malcolm & Marie Star John David Washington) wakes up in bed draped over his girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander). They enjoy their Athens vacation and visit the stony ruins and misty mountains that characterize the exotic setting. But they hear a rumor of an upcoming protest that will tarnish their sunny place. On her drive to another, quieter resort in the mountains, Beckett falls asleep and hits a house with her car. Beckett comes out of the crash with a broken arm, but April dies.
Beckett bites off much more than it can chew. After the crash, Beckett tells police he saw a red-haired child in the house he crashed into. He doesn’t know, but this boy’s face is plastered all over Greece. He is the kidnapped nephew of the left-wing politician Karras (Yorgos Pirpassopoulos), who is building a coalition to reverse the austerity measures taken by the European Union against Greece. His strategy displeased the country’s far-right fascists. However, the film never reveals anything else about these opposing sides, which keeps viewers at a distance and is unable to fully immerse themselves in the film’s larger political conflict.
Beckett is the first English language film by the Italian director. It involves an ignorant protagonist in Greece’s internal political conflict and sends him on the run from two murderous, nameless people (Panos Koronis and Lena Kitsopoulou) who pretend to be police officers. Kevin A. Rice’s screenplay follows in the footsteps of similar fake man stories: Alfred Hitchcocks The 39 steps
Rice’s script is bloated but underdeveloped when it tries to balance Beckett’s grief with his struggle for survival. He cries every step of the way at the thought of his dead girlfriend. But the film spends little setup time with either of them, aside from their cursory tours. And Beckett doesn’t share memories of her to alert viewers of his loss. It focuses on the pursuit by the bogus cops who hope to tie up the loose end that Beckett represents before he can reach the American embassy where U.S. agent Tynan (Boyd Holbrook) is waiting for him. The obstacles these assassins pose are not entirely conspicuous because Beckett overcomes them too easily.
Worst of all, the character as written is one-dimensional, which gives Washington little to work with. But Washing ton doesn’t bring much to the table either. He is overshadowed by his co-stars, flat and devoid of any charisma. Vikander only appears in the opening minutes of the film. In this short time, she is a far more generous scene partner than her counterpart, throws secret glances and maneuvers Washington’s cement block full of emotions. Not only does Beckett miss her when she’s gone, the audience will likely miss her presence, too.
Vicky Krieps (Phantom thread) as Lena, one of two left activists who helped Beckett to the American embassy, also dwarfs Washington. Krieps’ emotional face offers a warmth that the script cannot. The film barely reveals any of her signed character, but she shows her years of struggle for change and her compassion for Beckett, a man she just met, is written on her face. Washington tries to draw a similar range in its character. You need charisma to create a wrong man thriller, a reason to get excited about the good guy who goes beyond the narrative we should. Washington doesn’t have that.
And he never has. He looks physically lost, as if he has never pointed a camera at him. (See principle.) Whenever he cries, he has a habit of being seen in Malcolm & MarieRolling your eyes far back into his head to find the tears. And his empty gaze does not draw the viewer into his worldview. (See principle once again. Or not.) He leaves the viewer at a constant distance and always observes how he reacts instead of living his emotions. All of these flaws come back to bite him here.
While the lead actor is expected to bear primary responsibility when a movie lacks charisma or personal appeal – especially a movie starring fake men – it would be unfair to blame Washington alone for this misfire. Beckett escapes his pursuers through rugged cliffs, a train painted with graffiti and in the trunk of a car. But all of these set pieces feel like they’ve been captured in a rush, and they don’t maximize the intrinsic fascination of their surroundings. Why shoot a film in Greece when you want to make its exotic appeal so general? Filomarino doesn’t need to show tourist traps, but neither can he find an interesting hole in the wall. Even the extras are unexciting and seemingly uninteresting. Washington, a black man, runs through the streets with handcuffs, but no one twinks their eyes.
Sometimes it feels like Filomarino wants to bring the race into history. But the villains’ intentions are not only mysterious, they are frustratingly opaque. The Greek dialogue is not translated in the subtitles. So when the villains are discussing Beckett, we don’t know how to describe him to one another. At various points, however, we hear his pursuers shouting into the crowd that they are looking for a black man. When Beckett arrives at the American embassy, he sees a picture of Obama. It’s as if Filomarino knows the subtext of an African American who is being followed by police in a foreign country, but doesn’t have the narrative or visual vocabulary to tease out his intentions.
The only Beckett Crew member who seems to get the mood a fake man’s movie needs is composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (The last emperor and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence), whose screeching strings and the unusual combination of cymbals and toms are frightening. The other moving parts are too inferior to maintain the tension desired, to the point where even a protest becomes ugly and Beckett jumps off a building to stop a moving car is not enough to revive the film. BeckettThe lead actor is a boring actor who weaves a boring web, and he’s the wrong man to deliver this flawed, recalcitrant storyline.
Beckett Debut on Netflix August 13th.