What separates a good action film from a great one? I’m sure there are many possible answers to this question, but mine perhaps is depth. If a film can keep the audience riveted with a fast-paced plot and dramatic stunts, while leaving a lasting impression through the depth of its characters and the questions it asks behind the action, then I would call that a success.

With these criteria in mind, let’s turn to Athena, a French film released in September set in the banlieue of Paris. The story follows the aftermath of the killing of Idir, a French-Algerian boy, which was caught on camera and made publicly available. The boy’s elder brothers, who suspect that his killing was at the hands of the police, each react in their own way to the news, leading to rapidly escalating conflict between them and between the brothers and the police. Director Romain Gavras is known for his fast-paced, graphic style and this film displays that prominently, although there isn’t much on-screen gore, which was a relief. The visual impact is powerful and grabbed my attention from the start. The pacing was also good enough that I watched it all in one evening, a feat I rarely accomplish with any film these days.

The film takes place almost entirely in the cité (housing project) of Athena. This type of housing project consists of densely-packed tower blocks located in the “banlieue”, a word which has very different connotations to its dictionary translation of “suburbs”. Over the decades, the banlieue has been associated in French mainstream narratives with crime, “radicalisation” and a threat to France’s holy “assimilation”, although it was the French government who created these segregated areas to house immigrants to start with. It is also the type of setting that at least one of the writers, Ladj Ly, grew up in.

We sometimes ask why films or books about non-Caucasian people always have to be deep and discuss “difficult” topics. I wondered whether this setting could be used for a lighter film since there have already been so many social commentary films made in this setting, including Les Misérables by the same writer, Ladj Ly. Of course, a simple action/thriller-style film in the cité featuring French-Algerian characters is entirely possible. However, I think once the police and a suspicious killing were brought into the picture, that was no longer an option. Furthermore, since this was released on Netflix, it has an international target audience and it’s hard to ignore the current wider context of questions around police violence in the US and the UK, among other places.

So, how does this film approach its social commentary? The three protagonists are at very different places in their lives and therefore react very differently to their brother’s killing. The eldest, Moktar, is fully invested in his drug-dealing pursuits and seems to have lost interest (and hope) in anything else, including his family; he does not react to the news. The second brother, Abdel, has recently returned from Mali as a soldier in the French army and responds by trusting the police to fulfil their promise of investigating the circumstances of his brother’s death. Finally, there is Karim who has lost all faith in such institutions and takes immediate action, leading his young friends and neighbours in arming themselves and barricading their cité, Athena. When the police descend on the area, tensions rapidly escalate, effectively turning into a war. It’s clear from the positioning of the three characters that the writers wanted to show three “paths” that a person in their situation might take: going outside of the law, following the law to the tee (“the good immigrant”) or attacking the law directly. Although it does seem a bit too neat to have one brother in each group, it’s still believable and has potential as a premise for social exploration. Naturally, then, we want to see where these paths will take the brothers as the drama escalates. I felt like this was perhaps where it started to unravel, becoming a bit too predictable and stereotypical. [The next paragraph contains spoilers – skip to the conclusion to avoid them.]

Abdel, the law-abiding citizen, is eventually driven to change his position when the police kill Karim, becoming the most extreme form of the two other paths. While this is a valid reaction, the level of inhumanity that Abdel takes on after this change makes the viewer lose all sympathy for him; not to mention, his transformation just doesn’t make sense! Turning on his own people, he becomes wild, tearing through the cité in a violent rage, all of his previous concern for his murdered brother and his fellow residents gone in a puff of gunshot smoke. Throughout the film, the rest of the young men following Karim’s and then Abdel’s leadership are portrayed as mindless followers just out to have fun and blow a few cars up. Again, in any protest or face-off situation like this, there will always be a group who gets carried up in the passion of the moment without any particular purpose, but in all of this, my question was what are the writers and director trying to say? What is the message here? “Life in the cité, facing government and police discrimination, will eventually turn you violent, stupid or mad”? By the end, I didn’t really have any empathy left, just a feeling of disappointment at the potential for depth being taken away so suddenly. As for the ending, social media comments and reviews are largely unanimous in their “what??” reactions. It was another attempt at shock, but once again, accompanied by a hollow echo of a message.

To conclude, does Athena fulfil my criteria for a successful action film? It undoubtedly has the fast pace and striking cinematography. I also thought the acting was decent, especially Karim’s character (played by Sami Slimane), who I found most engaging and who drove the first half of the film for me. As for the depth criteria, while I thought it had potential to start with, the characters’ motivations and actions lost meaning dramatically in the second half of the film and, although it seemed like the writers and director wanted to deliver a message, I couldn’t discern anything particularly complex or compelling. If you are looking for an action film with strong visual appeal, you might enjoy this one, but don’t expect too much depth.