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A major character death sets the events of Netflix’s thriller Beckett in motion, yet it fails to resonate emotionally by the end of the movie.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Beckett, now streaming on Netflix.
In Netflix’s Beckett, the titular character, played by John David Washington, plunges into a kidnapping conspiracy after a car crash takes the life of his beloved, April (Alicia Vikander), during their Greek holiday. Because he falls asleep at the wheel in the first act, he feels guilty throughout the movie and proceeds to want to save a kid, Dimos, who’s kidnapped by the mafia as a way of getting back at his corrupt politician uncle. But by the time Beckett wraps up, April’s big death simply doesn’t resonate emotionally the way the film thinks it does.
Honestly, April’s role could be cut out of the film entirely, and it would barely change a thing. If it were Beckett alone who careened off the hill and into the house where he spotted Dimos being held captive, his mission would remain the same. Not to mention, the mafia would still attempt to silence him, causing the American tourist to flee to Athens to the U.S. Embassy and encounter a traitor who’s inadvertently ready to expose the entire conspiracy.
Now, we get that the film’s trying to craft an emotional anchor for Beckett, but it comes across as superficial. There aren’t many flashbacks to his and April’s past; instead, the movie hinges on the first 15 minutes where they spend time together and leave the hotel to rove the Greek countryside. Their outing does little to develop their relationship as a couple, so it’s hard to connect with Beckett when, at the end of the film, he says it should have been him who died.
Beckett is clearly wracked by guilt after rescuing Dimos and stopping the villains, but had there been something like a proposal or had he kept an engagement ring for a secret proposal, the movie’s ending have hit harder. Not to mention, the film barely touches upon the fight he and Alice had before the beginning of the story, even though it supposedly challenged the foundation of their relationship.
By better addressing things like this, the movie would have added more nuance to Beckett’s relationship with April, explaining why he had to hang up on her dad, unable to tell him what really happened in the crash. Instead, April feels like she could just as well represent a fling of a relationship or a one-night stand, as opposed to being Beckett’s soulmate like the audience is led to believe.
The sight of a sad, shaking Beckett at the conclusion of the movie had the potential to be a heartbreaking one, had Alice functioned as more than a plot device up to that point. For similar reasons, the idea that Beckett is still struggling with post-traumatic stress after saving the day doesn’t land as forcefully as it should.
Had Beckett slowed things down and dialed the action back a notch, it would have made more room for the film to explore Beckett and Alice’s past, creating the emotional space for that grief to come through. But without that vital context, it’s difficult to see how the loss is truly affecting Beckett in the movie’s final moments, in spite of his heroic actions earlier.
To see its many twists and turns, watch Beckett on Netflix now.
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