The film "Beckett" on Netflix: As if he was fleeing from the spirits of revenge

At the Oracle of Delphi, of all places, where ancient tragedies began, the action of the new Netflix film production "Beckett", directed by the Italian Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, opens. Here, in the Greek mountains, American tourists Beckett (John David Washington) and April (Alicia Vikander) take refuge in front of their hotel in Athens due to political unrest. In front of an ancient backdrop, the young couple exchanges turtles that have been freed from any authenticity - "I'm having a love attack, save myself" - which are actually only reserved for romantic comedies. "I think we should find the oracle to know where we're going," says April, without the film showing any serious interest in the characters' future wishes.

As a viewer, you will almost rudely come across the fact that the idyll will probably end soon. On a nightly drive, Beckett steers the rental car down a slope in a microsleep. The journey ends after multiple rollover in the brick wall of a farmhouse. Through the shattered window, Beckett thinks he sees a red-haired boy and a woman who disappear as quickly as they appeared. Back in his senses, he finds the lifeless body of his lover next to the wreck. In the hospital, Beckett, severely traumatized, endures the questioning of the police. When he mentions the red-haired boy, the provincial policeman (Yannis Kokiasmenos) is strangely taciturn: the farmhouse has long been abandoned.

Plagued by feelings of guilt, Beckett returns to the scene of the accident a little later.

In the blurred background - in one of the many multi-layered shots by the cameraman Sayombhu Mukdeeprom - a dark silhouette appears.

Then gunshots hit the protagonist.

His escape turns into a nightmare, because an unknown power is not only on his heels, but also regularly one step ahead.

An ominous woman in civilian clothes and the provincial policeman are among his persecutors, and he is now a stranger in a strange country fighting against state power.

People stumble, crawl and miss

From then on, Filomarino and his team rely on hyperrealism in “Beckett”: people stumble, crawl and miss. John David Washington, who recently had to save the world in a tailor-made suit in Christopher Nolan's “Tenet”, an ingeniously complicated reinvention of the secret agent genre, plays the American “Beckett” as a down-to-earth antihero who can neither believe it nor is qualified to do so. To be the protagonist of such an action thriller.

Unlike the human killing machines of contemporary genre competition, as embodied by Liam Neeson or Keanu Reeves, Washington's Beckett has to do without a dark past or military training and is only armed with an American passport. This should take him to the security of the US embassy in Athens. Only the way there leads him through the Greek provinces, overcrowded train stations and finally in the trunk of two left-wing activists (very present despite few sentences: Vicky Krieps) to those protests in Athens that he initially wanted to avoid.

The spectacularly captured landscape is almost oppressive: every river, every rock becomes an obstacle. Bullets, knives, falls and collisions visibly damage Beckett during the course of the film. As a viewer, you can feel Beckett's desperation when he asks the Greek passers-by (whose information is not subtitled) for help and the language itself becomes an insurmountable obstacle. Those who help him find themselves in the sights of his persecutors a little later. Beckett's attempt to become invisible in the crowd fails, unsurprisingly, since he is an African American with a gunshot wound and plaster of paris.

The script by Kevin A. Rice leaves little room for the supporting characters to shine, which puts this burden entirely on Washington's Beckett. Similar to the protagonist, the political subplot also dragged its way into the last third with a good groan: a strengthened New Right, questionable self-interests of the USA (which once again blame everything on “the Communists”) and EU austerity measures that corrupt the state - the thriller is clearly making an effort to radiate closeness to the present. But what sounds like a lot is only hinted at in the secondary scenes that are quickly flown over.

Anyone who can overlook this may recognize a psychologically complex character in the protagonist who cannot forgive himself.

Beckett goes through stages of grief and guilt, between the apathetic determination to survive and sheer overwhelm.

The latter breaks out in panic attacks that haunt him in the few quiet moments of the film.

Filomarino's idea of ​​chasing a tourist through a never-ending nightmare in a paranoia-charged thriller à la Hitchcock's “The Invisible Third” is so imaginatively implemented that there is little room to complain about any weaknesses in the plot.

You find yourself rethinking your summer vacation - the sofa still seems safest in these times.

Beckett is

running on Netflix starting today.