Romain Gavras' "Athena" opens with a single-take sequence so intricately choreographed, and so breathtaking in its visual sweep and emotional force, it's almost a shame that there's another 90 minutes or so of movie to go along with it. It begins at a news conference where a French soldier, Abdel (Dali Benssalah), gravely acknowledges the recent killing of his 13-year-old brother, Idir, during an apparent altercation with police. The tragic incident — the third instance of police brutality in two months, blares a news report — was captured in a video that's since gone viral; with the community in an uproar, Abdel has been called upon, at great personal cost, to help control the damage. But that objective is clearly futile once another man, Karim (Sami Slimane), hurls a Molotov cocktail, igniting this tinderbox of a movie and turning these already tense environs into a full-blown war zone.
Gavras' decision to film all this mayhem in one shot — or something that looks an awful lot like one shot — forges a visual link between Abdel and Karim, which is hardly an accident. It's soon revealed that the two men are brothers, though their shared grief at Idir's death has pulled them in radically different directions. The shot keeps unspooling, never blinking: With pulse-pounding virtuosity (the cinematography is by Matias Boucard), the camera plunges after Karim and other angry young men as they ransack the police station, steal a cache of weapons and then joyride their way back to the Athena housing estate they call home. And this place is their home, a sentiment they underscore by unfurling a French tricolor along the way: It's a defiant declaration of belonging in a country that hasn't always claimed them in return.
Before long, another flag — an Algerian flag — will burst into the frame, an emblem of these young men's North African lineage that subtly ties "Athena" to any number of political thrillers about French colonialism and Algerian resistance. At the same time, the emphasis on police brutality carries a topical edge that transcends strict cultural and geographical borders; you might be reminded of American headlines both recent and distant. You might also be reminded of 2019's Oscar-nominated "Les Miserables," a blistering banlieue drama written and directed by Ladj Ly. If "Athena" doesn't achieve the same power (even with Ly credited as a co-writer with Gavras and Elias Belkeddar), it's partly because its politics ultimately feel like a feint — a prop in a story that cares less about its characters, and the vast array of human experiences they represent, than about its own formal virtuosity.
