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<\/p>\nThe \u201cwrong man\u201d trope has a long cinematic history. It provided the basis for at least three Alfred Hitchcock classics – The 39 Steps, North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much. But it probably found its most intriguing form in the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, like The Conversation. Now director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino updates it in the Netflix film Beckett.<\/p>\n
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The film is basically one long chase sequence as the title character has to escape a band of ruthless assassins, never knowing who to trust. But the Italian director brings a particularly European viewpoint to the film. He leaves many questions unanswered, allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks. So the film operates on two levels, as a straight-up thriller, or as a more cerebral exercise. Which you favour is up to you.<\/p>\n
The film opens in northern Greece, where American couple Beckett (John David Washington) and April (Alicia Vikander) are touring some ancient ruins. They stay a little longer than planned, so have to drive at night through winding mountain roads to their next hotel. But Beckett falls asleep at the wheel and the car careens off the road and into a house. Dazed and injured, Beckett sees a man with a red-haired boy. Then he finds April\u2019s body before passing out. He wakes in hospital and is soon well enough to discuss the crash with the police. Bilingual Officer Xenakis (Panos Koronis) seems quite a reasonable chap and doesn\u2019t arrest Beckett over the crash. When Beckett mentions the red-haired boy, Xenakis says that can\u2019t be right, because the house has been abandoned for some time.<\/p>\n
A few days later, Beckett walks to the scene of the crash to try to make sense of it all. Just as he\u2019s surveying the scene, a blonde woman (Lena Kitsopoulou) arrives – and starts shooting at him. It soon becomes apparent she\u2019s in cahoots with Xenakis. With these armed and powerful people on his trail, Beckett desperately sees a way to get to Athens and the safety of the US embassy there.<\/p>\n
I found Beckett an odd film in many ways. It has all the trappings of a classic thriller, but it always felt a little off-kilter to me. Filomarino uses the \u201cstranger in a strange land\u201d scenario effectively. The mostly rural setting and the director\u2019s deliberate choice not to translate the large passages of Greek dialogue add to the feeling of disorientation. The time frame too is a bit murky, though it seems to be in the early 2010s when Greece was wracked by anti-austerity protests. But the background story about Greek politics is a bit lacklustre, and doesn\u2019t really mesh with the main plot. But when it clicks, Kevin Rice\u2019s script hums along. And cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Suspiria<\/a>) makes the most of the scenic locales.<\/p>\n