Athena – first-look review

In Greek mythol­o­gy, the god­dess Athena was the ​‘Helper of Heroes’ – she aid­ed Perseus and Her­a­cles, and most notably, guid­ed Odysseus on his 10-year voy­age back to Itha­ca. In Romain Gavras’ Athena, the mon­ick­er is giv­en to an impov­er­ished hous­ing estate which becomes a bat­tle­ground for protests and police after the death of a young boy – appar­ent­ly at the hands of the law – sparks a long-ges­tat­ing reckoning.

Abdel (Dali Benssalah) is caught between a rock and a hard place. A mil­i­tary man, the vic­tim was his youngest broth­er, and his death has dev­as­tat­ed their fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly hot-head­ed third sib­ling Karim (Sami Sli­mane) who is out­raged that the police refuse to name those respon­si­ble, even though the mur­der was caught on video. After a dis­as­trous press con­fer­ence, Karim and his friends storm a police sta­tion, make off with a load of riot gear, and bar­ri­cade them­selves in the tow­er block where they live. They refuse to come out until the police name the murderers.

Rook­ie cop and father-of-one Jérôme (Antho­ny Bajon) had noth­ing to do with the mur­der, but he becomes caught up in the vio­lence as he’s tak­en hostage by Karim’s gang. Mean­while, the news reports that Sébastien (Alex­is Manen­ti), a want­ed ter­ror­ist, is aid­ing the group, and Abdel and Karim’s eldest half-broth­er Mok­tar (Ouassi­ni Embarek) needs to shift his drug and mon­ey stash before the police rock up.

It’s the sort of high-octane dra­ma we’ve come to expect from Romain Gavras, who made his name cre­at­ing vivid music videos for the likes of M.I.A and Jay‑Z before burst­ing onto the film scene with his gang­ster thriller The World is Yours. For Athena, he col­lab­o­rates with Ladj Ly and Elias Belked­dar on a screen­play that owes much to Ly’s grit­ty Cannes break­out Les Mis­érables.

Giv­en Gavras’ music video back­ground, it’s no sur­prise that Athena is a styl­ish affair, with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Matias Bou­card fram­ing the dra­mat­ic scenes of vio­lence as though they’re Eugene Delacroix paint­ings. A choral-infused score and reli­gious iconog­ra­phy frame Karim’s move­ment as a cru­sade, and giv­en the his­to­ry of police vio­lence against civil­ians around the world, it’s easy to under­stand what has dri­ven Karim to such a des­per­ate place, where the only option seems to be fight­ing fire with fire.

Yet the knot­ty pol­i­tics of Athena are also its down­fall, as the script mean­ders towards an uncon­vinc­ing mid­dle ground, seem­ing­ly sug­gest­ing that the real ene­my is not the insti­tu­tion of polic­ing, but the rise of the far-right. While true that a glob­al rise in fas­cist pol­i­tics and beliefs has con­tributed to fur­ther divides with­in soci­ety, it feels as though Athena fails to recog­nise that some of these beliefs are shared by the peo­ple entrust­ed with enforc­ing law and order, instead choos­ing to pass the blame to an unseen far right bogey­man – and that’s with­out even con­sid­er­ing the well-doc­u­ment­ed insti­tu­tion­al cor­rup­tion with­in polic­ing itself.

It’s an action dra­ma that aims to shock with its brac­ing sound design and impact­ful visu­als, but its pol­i­tics feel mut­ed and ten­ta­tive, which pre­vents Athena from hav­ing the strongest impact pos­si­ble. By the end all that res­onates is a sense of loss, rather than injus­tice, and increas­ing­ly the ​“good guys on both sides” argu­ment feels hol­low when accounts of police bru­tal­i­ty are hard­ly in short supply.