The two films today; one a thriller that sadly needs more thrills, and a quiet rural drama that has some Goya’s under its belt.

Beckett (Netflix USA) - John David Washington is steadily gaining a name as an actor, successfully making the transition from pro athlete. But while this film has topped the US Netflix charts, it shows how Washington is still very much a product of who’s directing him. Spike Lee properly motivated him in BlacKkKlansman, he shined in Malcolm & Marie, and seemed a bit overwhelmed with Christopher Nolan in Tenet. But here in Beckett, it looks like he was pretty much left on his own in creating the Beckett character, and it’s serviceable but ultimately, underwhelming. It doesn’t help that the narrative is itself a mess, putting to waste the promising opening and premise of an American tourist caught in a Greek nightmare, where no one he turns to can help him out.

It starts fine, as we watch Beckett and his girlfriend (a wasted Alicia Vikander), leave Athens for Northern Greece. A road accident is what plunges this thriller into Hitchcock territory. There are political elements thrown into this wrong time, wrong place scenario; but does it satisfy or even hold water? I don’t think so, when you have a man wearing a cast performing death-defying stunt after stunt, and just moving on from there. I don’t think so when the actions of the people trying to get rid of Beckett are often on this side of incompetent and silly - like why don’t you let him come nearer to you before taking a potshot at him. And it’s hard to take Beckett seriously when his acting majorly consists of two modes - sleepy-eyed amidst the chaos, or bug-eyed to convey confusion. A really clumsy, over dramatic soundtrack doesn’t help but make the suspense feel comedic. Wasted effort.

The Bookshop (Video on Demand) - This film was actually released a few years ago, but was curious about it as it’s based on a Penelope Fitzgerald novel, and picked up three Goya Awards. Naturally, I was thinking why Spain’s Goya’s, until I picked up on the fact that Isabel Coixet, who directed the film, and wrote the Adapted Screenplay hails from Spain. She assembled a tremendous cast of veteran thespians - Emily Mortimer, Bill Nighy and Patricia Clarkson, and I’ll commend the production values of recreating East Anglia, England, in 1959. The novel spoke about small town mentality, prejudices, and the discreet power structure that exists even in such communities. Florence (Mortimer) is a middle-class widow with a love for books and opens a little bookshop in what was a long-deserted old structure in the middle of the rural town she has settled in.

The conflict arises when Violet (Clarkson), who passes as the Alpha Female in the town, decides she’d rather have an Arts Centre in the structure and conspires to deflate Florence’s enterprise. It’s only social recluse, but voracious reader and widower, Mr. Brundish (Nighy) who comes to Flo’s defense but that leads to its own disaster. Perhaps it’s being too faithful to the book, but I personally found the pacing of the film too slow. It may be a measure of the country life depicted, it may be by intent & design, but it didn’t make for engrossing cinema, and that is a shame. There is something precious in the narrative; and I loved the framing device of the narrator and reveal. A quality film that could have been brisker, and taken some liberties with the source material.
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