Athena. Netflix. 2022.


I preferred Romain Gavras when he was depicting his muggers roaming Paris in Clockwork Orange style gangs like in the music video "Stress" by Justice.  Back then his vision seemed to be motivated by an outsider's malice for the French way of life, when being an enfant terrible meant that you had to trash everything white as "fascist" and pretend to yourself that Rich kids like Vincent Cassel and his rapper brother were real outlaws and not just underwear models for Giorgio Armani.
Athena is a BLM fantasists fever dream where Far Right terrorists go to the trouble of dressing up as cops to group stomp a 13 year old boy half to death so his brothers can get free passes to burn down the shit hole banlieu they were spawned into. To the scorched earth! for Mon Frere! And if you get given an excuse to go on an anti white Jihad blaming an entire race for what a handful of wrong uns did to your brother,,,,it's justified,,,Naturally.
The plot of this film was written on the back of a king sized Rizla. Three brothers of North African origin. A war hero! An enigmatic urban guerilla. And a poor lickle kiddy widdy left for dead by far right gangsters. There are no white characters in this film. There is the charismatic gardener: Sebastien, who looks like he learnt his wizardry for improvised explosives from ISIS in Syria back in 2013. With his white Muslims appearance and his appetite for destruction the weaponized muggers of the Banlieu treat him like a hero. The other white character is the hapless Jerome who is prised from the CRS phalanx and chased piggy style for his sorry life. The cunt is suitably pathetic as a cry baby and when captured soils his police issue briefs to the amusement of the street hardened gangsters. HA!
So on with the show. Abdel the soldier from the French Army is sent in behind enemy lines to find cry baby Jerome and rescue him like the clichéd damsel in distress! It's all going rather well until Karim (who is a composite of Jesus, Che Guevara, Bin Laden and that mysterious guy from your local kebab shop) catches his brother in a moment of high treachery and threatens to do him in for being an Algerian Uncle Tom or Harki or lackey of the French Government if you prefer.
This part has an element of truth to it considering the perks back in the fifties for stabbing your own kind in the back. A war where a million plus Algerians were killed in their battle for independence. Well Gillo Pontecorvo's seminal film is often mentioned in relation to Athena. The truth is Athena is a kiddies on the rampage fuck fest and can't hold a candle to Battaile De Algiers. So there.
Abdel will not hand over Jerome so Karim offers to bring the barbecue to them. His speciality if you can call it that is the Molotov cocktail and he lights one up to do his Brother, Jerome and the bunker retreat in which they are cowering from the mob. Some cops appear to have outflanked our urban guerilla maestro and demand he lowers the now flaming petrol bomb. He does a valiant "You won't take me alive Copper!" and sets himself on fire! Now rather than have a "live by the sword, die by the sword" moment of clarity the film seems to be implying that it was the fault of the rogue cops, France and the French Establishment that this violent criminal decided to set himself on fire. Fuck off!
Abdul rushes out of the bunker and hoses his brothers now flame grilled body down with foam. He is too late! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
Someone's got to pay and captured piggy Jerome seems the obvious target. Abdel kicks the shit out of the blubbering CRS stooge and then wants to waste him once and for all, aiming a gun at his head. Jerome is White France. Do you get it?
He has stumbled into the Parisian Bronx with his fat arse hanging out and now the young lions of the streets are going to make him pay for the sins of his fathers. Just do it already.
The piggies tears trigger a sympathetic response in Abdel to let the cunt live although to be honest he looks too tired to care by now. Enter Sebastien.
The ISIS/Mossad trained improv explosive guy has been busy creating a modern art masterpiece out of propane bottles and hacked open gas pipes. The whole floor is primed to go BOOM!
Abdel could run but decides to be a part of Sebastien's flame drenched canvas. He lies back against the bed as the entire floor of the apartment building goes up like a CIA piloted jet liner flying into a New York office building. The final shot of the movie if you were maybe starting to think that this apocalyptic destruction against the homes of ordinary people was some how the fault of those involved. NO!
The far right lynch mob who beat Idir to death and recorded the crime for youtube posterity( we are led to believe) now throw their phoney police disguises into a fire, just as a Far Right cross tattoo is made visible on the back of the neck of one of the thugs. The message is free of subtlety. You did this to yourself France! That might actually be truer than this crude propaganda piece makes clear.



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