Athena

...too much of everything. It makes the impression that the director and the d.o.p. Were working for their reel and their reputation instead for the film. The long shots, the fire works, the steadycam shots, the drone shots...everything is kinda used all the time and frequently without serving any purpose except of being there and looking cool. And thats the biggest problem of the film. It feels like the wet dream of any music video director, but not like an generic and authentic film. It lacks of bravery to look ugly...sure it looks good if a dude on a horse is riding through the smoke weaving the french flag in the middle of a revolt...but does it really need to be there?

This is very good. The initial scene is one of the best intros...in the cinema history. As simple as that. Technically the film is always great and one of those that I would really have preferred to watch in a cinema room. Unfortunately, Netflix doesn't want that.

I see some people criticising the plot or the script. Well, the plot is good IMO. For a film that happens in one night I think it touches in many things and isn't even politically correct (a lot of the spectators would have preferred to blame only the police because for them is always white and black). The script is...honestly, good enough? Yeah, some dialogue is not that great, but what do you think would be the real dialogue in a situation like this one? Do you really know how these people or most people usually speak in these scenarios?

A very good film. Really surprised to see this is the first film of one of the main actors and one of those films that will force me to watch previous films of this director.

THERE IS NOTHING SMALL ABOUT ATHENA. THEREFORE, THE ONLY WAY TO DO JUSTICE TO THIS MOVIE IS TO WRITE A REVIEW IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

IT STARTS WITH AN ATTACK ON ALL SENSES IN A SHOT THAT SEEMS TO STRETCH THROUGH THE ENTIRE MOVIE.

THE MASS SCENES OF UNREST GIVE YOU AN INSIGHT HOW A SIEGE IN ANCIENT TIMES HAVE LOOKED LIKE. AND WITH DIFFERENT COSTUMES AND WEAPONS, YOU MIGHT HAVE HAD A FEELING OF PARTICIPATING IN A BATTLE BACK THEN.

AND JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT ADRENALINE IS EVERYTHING ATHENA HAS TO OFFER, THE AUTHORS OPTED FOR EMOTIONS AND REACHED THE HEIGHTS OF AN ANCIENT GREEK TRAGEDY. THE CHARACTERS HAD TO MAKE DIFICULT CHOICES, TO SAY THE LEAST.

THE RUNNING TIME OF ROUGHLY 90 MINUTES WAS THE RIGHT DECISION. EVERYTHING BEYOND WOULD BE PERSIFLAGE.

IF I NEED TO SUM THIS ALL UP, I'D SAY ATHENA WAS MORE OF AN EXPERIENCE THAN MERELY A FILM. IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME A MOVIE I STREAMED DIDN'T MAKE ME REACH FOR THE FAST-FORWARD BUTTON. IT FELT AS IF SOMEONE WAS PUNCHING ME IN THE STOMACH DURING THE WHOLE DURATION OF THE MOVIE.

IF WE ARE TO TAKE A LIGHTER APPROACH TO THIS REVIEW, ATHENA WOULD BE HATE (1995) MEETS TROY (2004).

IN TERMS OF IMDB STARTS ATHENA IS AT THE TOP OF THE RANGE.

Athena is one of the most surprising films I've seen this year and I think it's safe to say I ended up loving it, I didn't know what to expect going in and this film wonderfully surprised me, while it's basically a retelling of the year between George Floyd's death and the trial in 2021, but it managed to put a few twists and turns in also.

It's a visual spectacle with a brilliant atmosphere, beautiful cinematography and truly bone cracking fight scenes, our main character, Abdel, is brilliant, Dali Benssalah put on a truly raw and powerful performance perfectly portraying the pain we all felt during the time of violence and riots.

The musical score is absolutely wonderful, wow, it's some of the best I've heard since Causeway, Athena manages to give us a driven character story while also having a somewhat breathtaking ending to pull it all together, and I'm proud to say I loved it.

Athena gets an A-

Athena is a bleak, almost dystopian look at the near future of France, a country familiar with racial tensions. We follow three brothers: Karim, a revolutionary leader of the community in revolt, Athena (Salimane), Abdel, a respected military man (Dessalah), and Moktar, a drug dealer (Embarek), as they reel from the death of their brother Idir, at the hands of police.

The death, supposedly the third in one month, leads to an uprising reminiscent of the 1871 Paris Commune, where the city essentially seceded from France for a year. Athena follows the chaos and starts with possibly the best intro of 2022: a blistering, intense one take that introduces the movie with an incredible bang. It's so good I've watched the intro itself three times.

But Athena doesn't let up from there; this isn't a movie that bogs itself down in drama and conversation. It's high octane, kinetic, and a feast for the senses. This is a gorgeous movie; the cinematography so perfectly captures the chaos and finds beauty in it. There are literal shots from this movie that I could see being album covers. The music is epic; orchestral mixed with booming synth that gives this very contemporary story a timelessness. It's as if we're watching an ancient siege take place in the 21st century. I can't gush enough about the amazing music, especially that sinister main theme.

The performances are also excellent; Salimane and Dessalah in particular convey a lot with their facial expressions; I fully understood the dynamics of their complicated relationship even though they shared the screen together quite briefly.

When I first watched Athena, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of substance to the story; while we get clues as to why the anger that is displayed in the film - the anger of immigrant communities vis a vis their interactions with the police in suburban Paris - the world we're entering isn't *fully* disclosed to us.

There are also some plot developments that I don't think make a ton of sense, and the movie begins to falter a bit for me by Act III. There's a plot development and we're sort of rushed into a the third act; the people I watched this movie with were shocked the movie was ending so quickly. It felt like we could've and should've gotten more.

But, the fact that I could watch this movie with others and know they'd be entertained is kind of a miracle. The French tend to make films about their society collapsing along racial and religious lines quite a bit. It's something I would never really expect to see from American filmmakers, and it's incredible to see it so often from France (I'm thinking of movies like Frontieres, Les Miserables etc.).

If you want to introduce audiences to French cinema, you really can't get better than Athena. It's an incredible, accessible, and very rewatchable movie. I highly recommend it, because I guarantee you're probably not going to see anything like it.