Beckett

IDK what people are tripping about, this movie was good. Conspiracy action movie set in Greece. Simple and yeah he says it at the end. He should of died. I think if they made it too realistic it couldn’t be as good of a movie. 8/10

It is very much like a seventies movie. You could imagine Gene Hackman or Dustin Hoffman in a movie like this. It's quite good and John David Washington is great.

The movie goes on a little too long, with one perilous situation after another piling up a little too fast. Still, it did manage to hold my interest, largely thanks to Washington who turns in another great performance.

That was a decent film but did feel like it went on for too long and good performance from John.

This was so much the opposite of everything you’ll see playing in theaters. It’s a small story with sparse action, lots of natural tension, and only a few convenient moments. The filming style takes you back to suspense thrillers of the 70s and 80s and John David Washington plays a great any-man who is thrust into the middle of a plot he wasn’t meant to be a part of. I wouldn’t say this is a must-see, but it is a great counter-point to the slick, big budget nonsense that most movies today turn out to be.

A throwback 1970's style thriller about an American tourist running for his life after stumbling into a conspiracy in Greece. On the whole it's well made and stylish and I'm glad I watched it, but it stumbles along the way and never quite reaches its potential.

Washington's performance is solid, and at key points he can be very expressive. However, he too often goes for the understated approach, where he's just staring intently or looking a bit lost. I noticed this in Tenet too. It's a better choice than overacting, but I think both these roles would have benefited from a more dynamic performance. These movies are thrillers, after all.

Beckett is supposed to be an everyman, not a super spy. It makes sense that he's barely managing to survive and taking lots of damage. But as an average guy [spoiler]he sure has a lot of success taking down armed opponents. Once or twice can be lucky, but they repeat this too many times. And that final stunt where he Batman leaps four stories down onto a car he can't even see is just too much.[/spoiler]

They could have easily told the same story but let him rely more on luck and help from others rather than all these inexplicable heroics. In the final sequence when [spoiler] Lena is following Beckett around Athens, she never once intervenes. She only shows up late to see that he's already overcome the embassy guy, or the special forces lady, or the dirty cop man. The script couldn't have her sneak up behind at least one of them and knock 'em out with an old metal pipe? No, because even though he's the everyman he needs to be the action hero too.[/spoiler]

Not a bad film actually. Its certainly all been done before but it had enough suspense and action to keep my interest. Not bad for a Netflix film.

Castle puns aside, this was a great movie. John David Washington, just wow! What I loved most was that this at least had a plausible storyline, and did not go way OTT like the Fast franchise. While fast 9 was trash, this one truly shines. Just wish Alicia Vikander was in a few more scenes.

Beckett is a good movie that is going to keep you glued to the screen, as an intense movie such as this should. It has very good performances that feel very real and emotional.

Don't be dissuated by the other comments, it's definitely worth a watch.

I'm really not sure about John David Washington. The man is the silent protagonist of video games but for movies and that's really not a compliment. He is a blank canvas on screen and he never really puts in a performance that convinces you of anything. That worked for Tenet, but here it sticks out like a sore thumb. While the premise is gripping enough, I found Beckett to be all the running of a Bourne/Bond movie, but without the bite of the action set pieces found in those movies. It tries to increase the scope of the narrative with a large international political scandal, but it all just comes off a little contrived and not thought through. That being said, I still found the core premise intriguing enough to see through to the final credits, but I was neither blown away nor underwhelmed by the whole thing. It was just ok.