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 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.
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 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.
Review by BryanVIP 5BlockedParent2021-08-18T02:31:42Z
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 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.
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 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.