Tetarti 04:45

Modern Greek cinema hasn't had the easiest of relationships with Athens, the mega capital of Greece where around half of the population lives. It usually prefers to set its stories in the countryside, or in the no man's lands of domestic hell, as was the case with Dogtooth, Greek cinema's biggest export of the last decade.

Alexis Alexiou, the director of Tetarti 04:45 (Wednesday 04:45) goes to the opposite direction. His camera seems determined to shoot every street light and road bump of night time Athens. However, he doesn't really want to capture the city but rather transform it to Hong Kong, the source of his movie's inspiration.

Because Tetarti is essentially a Hong Kong thriller set in Athens. Unfortunately, that is the movie's eventual downfall. Alexiou the director can recreate all the slow motion shots and shooting duels that characterize the genre with gusto and flair albeit without bringing something really new to the blueprint set by masters like John Woo. His kraft however is let down by Alexiou the screenwriter. His efforts to weave into the story the social realities created by the ongoing financial crisis in Greece are mostly schematic and the plot itself simplistic at best. Club owner owns debt to Romanian kingpin, is being assigned a task he doesn't want to execute and the end is utterly and tediously predictable. Most of the actors, with the exception of Mainas, fall victim to the paper thin characters and Adam Bousdoukos, who has the second meatiest part, doesn't really deliver.

Tetarti can only be recommended for hardcore addicts of Hong Kong thrillers. For the rest, the repeated traveling night shots of Athenian highways lit by the reddish street lights will eventually overstay their welcome and there will be little left to keep them intrigued.

The films of Johnny To are the template for this noble effort which despite the intentions of the director, misses the mark. Visually its OK, if not great, as the trailer suggests. The night scenes have some atmosphere even if there is a long way to go until they reach Wong Kar Wai levels. The problem is that Athens doesn't look good on film and this shows during the daytime scenes. My favorite depictions of Athens on film are still Spielberg's Munich and 70's giallo Death Steps In The Dark. While this film has some impressive visuals, it fails to achieve the classy look the director was striving for. It may had to do with budget reasons. But the biggest problem of the film is the script. There is not much of a story to justify the two hours running time and the performances are quite weak. It may have helped if the film was thirty or forty minutes shorter.The fact is, there are no surprises here. The viewer knows from the start how this is going to end. The build up is quite problematic and the way the secondary characters and plot elements are handled is pointless. The violence scenes are not handled very well either mostly due to the fact that they are buried under several stylistic elements which diminish the impact of the scene. Still if you are interested in modern Greek cinema, give this a shot. If nothing else the director has proved that one day he may be able to deliver a really interesting film.

While the plot may be familiar – a Greek nightclub owner is in debt to the mob and is slowly sinking into ever worse and more frightening trouble – the moody and visually striking approach brought to it by Alexis Alexiou proves once again you can always re-tell a tale if you do it with a new voice. He also takes advantage of his nation's grave credit crisis'to create a political background of quite interesting irony to his character's woes.

Taking place largely at night, and making great use of existing artificial light (lens flairs are everywhere), this creates a dreamlike atmosphere that gives it a very subjective tone throughout. We are trapped in Stelios' nightmare, carried along by forces seemingly beyond his control. Stelios Marinas does some excellent work as the main character, and all the main supporting roles are well fleshed out too. The climactic showdown feels just a touch overblown, a bit out of sync with the lower key intensity of most of the film.

But overall this is one of those films I sort of tripped into hearing about and then made an effort to track down a copy of, ending up very pleased I did.