✔️ 2022-09-23 14:13:47 – Paris/France.
Just a few weeks after passing through the international competition of the Venice Film Festival, it is already reaching screens around the world, via Netflix, ATHENA, a mixture of thriller and war film centered on the conflict between the police and the inhabitants of a popular district on the outskirts of Paris which bears the name of the film. It is a violent social film in the format of a war film, built on the basis of long and spectacular sequence shots but also with some stylistic flaws that end up at one point transforming it into a kind of action video game. realistic.
The story kicks off with a bang and although the story isn't told strictly in real time, it only takes a few hours from start to finish. The first eleven minutes are the best and most intense. They start with Abdel (Dali Benssalah), a French soldier who comes out of a police station and tries to calm the people gathered there to complain about the death of a neighborhood child, who is his brother. But Karim (Sami Slimane), another of the deceased boy's brothers, does not think the same as Abdel (the similarity with the biblical names is not coincidental) and throws a Molotov cocktail at the detachment, triggering the chaos that will spread throughout the film. . .
These first eleven minutes include the robbery of the police station, clashes with the force, the escape and the armed takeover of the buildings of Athena while waiting for what literally seems like an armed invasion of the police force. Karim is the leader of this movement but Abdel – more religious, close to the police and eager for dialogue and understanding – tries to calm the waters. They will not be the only ones in conflict, not even the only brothers to fight, since there will also be the oldest of them all, Moktar (Ouassini Embarek), a drug dealer who works in the neighborhood and who does not care than to get out of there with your money and your goods. Or at least hide it well.
There will be other points of view that will be added to this chain of sequence shots through which the story is told. One is that of a policeman who, in the middle of an attempt to take over the complex, will get lost alone in the middle of the night and in the dark corridors, and will be taken hostage. There are also the inhabitants of Athena, who try to evacuate, which is not easy in the middle of the chaos. And the religious leaders, who want to reach peaceful agreements, but who don't get much. And the threat of far-right anti-immigrant gangs and a mystery figure who's out there who doesn't quite know what he wants.
The film by Gavras – a director with a lot of experience in music videos – seems to be a stylistic update of the films of his father, Costa Gavras, in the current era and in the fashions used today. Yes Z had a thick political plot in action movie mode, ATHENA It goes much further and does so by choosing the format of the video game. And the conflict between the brothers is typical of a Greek tragedy, which is not rare coming from a scenario writer of this family origin and even according to the name of the district in which takes place this “civil war”.
The games reference CALL OF DUTY This is not only due to the format chaos, sequence shot and constant confrontation between different "players" - with many NPCs, by the way, circulating around - but at some point the real sense of danger will disappear and, more than the bullets, which seem to be circulating around the stages, are digital fireworks, as if everything was just a staging of real chaos.
There, the film begins to falter. Not in its rhythm, but in the formal and script conventions with which it organizes its second half. The brothers' "political" positions are suitably different to represent a whole possible ideological arc while the forces of order - with the exception of the hostage in question on whom the second rise of the film will be mounted after a brief rest- remain as voiceovers. And even when the camera slows down a bit and the races slow down, the dialogue and performance will continue to maintain a level of exasperation such that it's clear there will never be a return to so much screaming and shouting. intensity.
The scenario of ATHENA was written by Gavras and Ladj Ly, director of WRETCHED, another film about the clashes between the police and young people from working-class neighborhoods based on an act of "heavy hand" by the authorities. This limited its action to an urban building and extends here to a building complex (type Lugano I and II) which can be a deadly trap not only for the police trying to enter and control it, but also for those who live there.
The idea of the two films is similar: uncontrolled and unregulated police violence generates reactions of this type. And there is no possible mediation if those responsible do not show up. The film will keep some "surprises" from it until the end (surprises which, let's say, are a way of "outing the ball", to use a footballing metaphor) and will manipulate the characters to arrive at situations of extreme intensity. which are not always necessary. But, as in the video games effective warfare, the action never stops completely, the tension never lessens and its 90 minutes can be seen as a unique and violent war sequence… only with a neighborhood as a backdrop. It's not a subtle or clever film, but a film that poses a very real social problem and solves it with a bang.
SOURCE: Reviews News
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