Critics reviews

A neo-noir style of film, Stratos is masterly in all its elements. Like [Xenia and A Blast], it is open to various allegorical readings about crisis, both economic and moral.

Yannis Economides' Stratos could be described as great, albeit trying for those unfamiliar with one of Greece's finest and therefore unprepared for 137 minutes of verbal mayhem... As his 2010 Knifersuggested, Economides has a taste for the unpleasant and knows how to make trash-talking crooks look exciting. As he sees it, Greece gets what it deserves.

[Stratos] begins with an Elmore Leonard-flavoured humour and savagery in its story of a tired hit man who gradually begins to realize he's getting screwed; but then, it just simply runs out of gas.

Economiedes packs his drama with lingering dialogue scenes... and protracted transitions usually involving cars driving down roads. As a film about moral decline in contemporary Greece, it's heavy-handed but affecting... There are some great individual moments here as well as a lot of interesting compositional choices. Yet the motivations of the characters come across as rather obscure, making it a film whose essential in-the-moment power gradually diminishes in the memory.

The film is a stylish, intelligent crime movie which succeeds as a somewhat exaggerated but coherent reflection on the recent economic history of Greece, taking in moral indolence, apathy, corruption, an obsession with money and so on... The trouble is that the film, for all its resonance and engaging eccentricity, suffers from being unduly protracted and repetitive: the script has the characters say things over and over again... and each scene would benefit by being cut by a third.

The victims of the titular baker/hitman have it easy; it's the audience that dies slowly at "Stratos," director Yannis Economides' perversely protracted study of moral and spiritual decay in recession-era Greece as seen through the eyes of a sullen hired killer. This latest torch-bearer of the ongoing Greek cinema revival is a frustrating experience, to say the least, given that Economides (directing his fourth feature) has obvious gifts for image making and atmosphere...