Beckett
Netflix | Release Date (Streaming): August 13, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
52
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 24 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
15
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
Los Angeles TimesMichael OrdoñaAug 12, 2021
It’s a ‘70s paranoia movie in the best sense. And this is no hackneyed tribute; it’s complex, murky, propulsive. Read full review
75
Vanity FairRichard LawsonAug 17, 2021
Beckett moves through the film not as an invincible badass, but as a man who is tired and in a great deal of pain. And there is indeed no rest for the weary: when Beckett has a brief respite from his physical odyssey, the grief rushes back in. It’s all pretty difficult to watch, as it probably should be. Read full review
75
The Film StageErik NielsenAug 11, 2021
Its setup is elevated, even after it goes from one close call to another, by the dream logic Filomarino instills in the minutiae of his story’s moving parts and John David Washington’s full-bodied performance. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 11, 2021
Apart from a few lapses, Filomarino is straightforward and gets the job done. Along the way, he taps into everyone’s most paranoid fantasy about foreign travel — where the police and authority figures turn on you, and the Constitution or Bill of Rights are a few thousand miles away. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineWilliam RepassAug 5, 2021
It’s thanks to a kind of tug of war between background and foreground that Beckett succeeds as a piece of entertainment. Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeAug 4, 2021
It’s intriguing to see Filomarino experiment with the formula and exciting to imagine where his career might go from here. Read full review
67
IndieWireDavid EhrlichAug 4, 2021
Thin and politically disengaged as this diverting Euro-thriller can be, it never forgets how even the most desperate of people can be left to suffer in plain sight — nothing but figures in a landscape. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsAug 19, 2021
The premise is ripe; the thrills are rich; the payoff doesn’t come together quite as easily as the rest. Read full review
60
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaAug 18, 2021
John David Washington falls short of the story’s emotional demands, but he brings a desperate physicality as a man on the run, which makes the film just about worth watching. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriAug 13, 2021
Director Filomarino is onto something here. The warm intimacy of the movie’s early scenes is replaced by such shocking brutality by the end that the violence feels like an emotional correlative, a blood ritual of sorts. Read full review
60
The GuardianBenjamin LeeAug 13, 2021
Like Beckett trying to escape his pursuers, it’s a scrappy little film but one worth keeping up with. Read full review
60
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Sarah HagiAug 12, 2021
Despite its shortcomings, Beckett manages to be a semi-effective thriller, with Washington holding enough attention to get the audience to root for his titular protagonist, but the lack of character development means viewers are never fully invested in his story. Read full review
60
We Got This CoveredScott CampbellAug 10, 2021
Beckett is a solid Netflix effort that offers a throwback to the intense political manhunt thrillers of the 1970s. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubRoxana HadadiAug 4, 2021
The Beckett character is sparsely written, and the sometimes bland performance Washington delivers doesn’t fill in many characterization gaps; it’s a problem that affects the pacing, too. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 16, 2021
There is no sadder genre than the tedious thriller, a movie that works hard to entice us with suspense, rough and tumble action, maybe even alluring locales, only to fizzle out far from the finish line. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreAug 14, 2021
None of this film’s shortcomings took me totally out of it. I was drawn into the story, in spite of its “Oh come now” moments when our hero gets a break, or avoids having every bone broken by doing something nobody who has a choice would hazard. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 11, 2021
This is every bit the international thriller, from the exotic locations to the global political elements to the cast. If only we could get involved in Beckett’s story and truly care about his fate. Read full review
50
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzAug 11, 2021
If you’re going to keep your audience guessing, you need to provide them with answers they care about. Beckett doesn’t. Read full review
50
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganAug 4, 2021
Beckett, though, has better films in its DNA - it is by no means original. What it mostly serves as is a reminder of what is missing from independent cinema - and may well be gone for good. Read full review
42
The PlaylistJessica KiangAug 4, 2021
For a film in which John David Washington lurches, staggers, stumbles, shambles, flounders, falters, wobbles, scrabbles and totters across an entire Greek province . . . Beckett sure is dull. Read full review
40
The New York TimesManohla DargisAug 13, 2021
Washington is a likable actor and easy on the eyes, but the character is unproductively one-dimensional and so is the performance, which remains reactive and opaque. Here, at least, he can’t turn an underconceptualized character into one whom you either care about or want to watch gasping and grimacing for several hours. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyAug 4, 2021
Directed with a workmanlike lack of style by Ferdinando Cito Filomarino and written by Kevin A. Rice without the required ambiguities to feed the protagonist’s paranoia, this pedestrian wrong-place-wrong-time manhunt through Greece never really sparks. And the jury that’s still out over whether John David Washington is movie-star material gets shaky evidence to support that case. Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comOdie HendersonAug 13, 2021
If you didn’t know Beckett was a thriller, you’d think it was about two mismatched people with dry interests, mundane conversations, and zero attraction. Read full review
30
PolygonRobert DanielsAug 14, 2021
This film, unfortunately, fails to live up to the quality of its influences. Filomarino’s Beckett lacks urgency, wit, and a lead actor capable of pulling together its underwritten themes. Read full review
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