Beckett Parent Guide

Although they started their vacation in Athens, a major political gathering scheduled right outside their hotel motivates Beckett (John David Washington) and his girlfriend April (Alicia Vikander) to take a trip to some smaller towns in northern Greece. While driving to their new hotel late at night, Beckett dozes off at the wheel, crashing the car down a cliff and into a house, killing April instantly. Before losing consciousness, Beckett is sure he saw a young boy, but after speaking with the police when he wakes up in the hospital, he is informed that the house is unoccupied. Becket is soon to learn that he has inadvertently stumbled into a national conspiracy which involves kidnapping, murder, and political assassination – and the conspirators do not intend to let him live long enough to tell anyone about it.

This is basically a Mad-Libs script. In *country*, tourist becomes involved in *conspiracy*, and struggles to know who to believe or where to turn. His only hope is *distant organization*, and only has *period of time* to get there before *pursuing entities* catch up with him. Formulaic writing doesn’t help any movies, but thrillers suffer more than most. The entire point of the genre is to be exciting and suspenseful – which is not easy to do when I already know where the script is going.

What’s even worse is that the film doesn’t even really try to hide which characters are involved with the conspiracy. They all ooze betrayal like a snail with a head cold. Although I suppose I shouldn’t complain, since the screenwriters barely bothered to give their title character a personality at all. I like John David Washington for the most part, but in this film he has two settings: Scared and confused. Once or twice he manages to be distraught, but mostly he sticks with scared and confused.

Frankly, I’m not sure there’s any reason I’d choose to watch Beckett over a more sophisticated thriller. This production has less profanity than some I could mention, but still too much to make it appropriate for a family audience. And then there’s the usual violence, which does not endear this to a younger audience either.

It’s always hard to write reviews for movies that are just…mediocre. This isn’t terrible, and I don’t want to give you that impression. If anything, it’s ephemeral. The details are all so familiar that they slip through your brain and leave little impression. You could absolutely sit down and watch this to kill time and not have a single thought cross your mind. If that’s what you’re looking for, then look no further.