Film: Beckett
Starring: John David Washington, Vicky Krieps, Boyd Holbrook, Lena Kitsopoulou, Panos Koronis
Director: Ferdinando Cito Filomarini
Review: Klep Napier
Rating: 3.5X’s out of 5X’s
One hell of a political thrill ride is all that needs to be said when describing Beckett!
Directed and written by Ferdinando Cito Filomarini [Call Me By Your Name], Beckett reminds us of how spoiled we are as movie goers. Stripping away the nonsense of CGI and giving us real grounded chases, action and suspense sequences the way they did with films such as Serpico, First Blood and Surviving The Game.
Beckett [John David Washington] is an average man. He doesn’t have training in hand to hand combat, no training with weapons and absolutely no instincts to speak of. Beckett is just a man who after he and his girlfriend get into a tragic car accident while touring through Greece, falls into the middle of an international conspiracy. Sending him, a fish out of out of water, on the run for his life.
At first watch this film moved extremely slow. All we had to go off of was the trailer which told us something was supposed to happen, we just had no clue when. So the first 20 minutes were a slow burn. But a necessary one. Filomarini wants to make sure that you have your detective cap on and are paying attention. He’s not feeding you with an all star cast, quips, humor and stunts to grab your attention. No, he’s building blocks of story so you connect with the main characters journey and empathize with his anxiety to stay alive. This all plays out well by the time the main plot kicks in.
Joining Washington is Vicky Krieps who plays [Lena]. Now, although she’s in the picture, she doesn’t come into the picture until very late on in the film. This is very much a one man show and Washington sells the mild mannered average joe too well to swallow comfortably. At some point you will be growling at the screen about how you would’ve done it so much differently. But then you snap back into really because hey, this isn’t Fast and The Furious folks, This is as close to a real life situation as you could possibly get.
We won’t get into too many spoiler-ish details about the overall plot, but by the end of the film the message is totally clear. Beckett is stricken with finding his purpose in all of this. Literally. And at some point understands that his survival is now bigger than himself and he must put an end to the mess he’s gotten himself into.
Overall, Becket is great piece of cinema mixed in a world of fast cars, big explosions, magic and super powers. It’s the little guys time to shine and this film makes movie watching special again with little effort. John David Washington is on the right path as far as molding himself into someone who can play anyone and we look forward to witnessing his continued growth as an actor.
Beckett hits Netflix Friday The 13th, 2021