A French Action Thriller Just Became A Global Streaming Hit On Netflix

When done with a modicum of proficiency, action movies are pure cinema. They are kinetic, ecstatic, and occasionally balletic. Whether we're watching hand-to-hand brawls, bullet-whizzing shootouts, or tire-squealing car chases, action cinema holds the potential to leave us gasping and cheering as stunt people (or combat-trained actors) strut their fearless stuff. And if the director is skilled enough to inventively storyboard, shot-by-chaotic-shot, the mayhem unfolding on the screen, your reward is nothing short of bliss.

While the action films of maestros like John Woo, Jackie Chan, and Walter Hill make life worth living, a true movie junkie can get their daily fix from a down-and-dirty formula flick laden with crudely executed punch-ups and twisted-metal set pieces. There is a nobility to this kind of filmmaking. In her vital essay "Trash, Art and the Movies," legendary film critic Pauline Kael wrote, "The lowest action trash is preferable to wholesome family entertainment. When you clean them up, when you make movies respectable, you kill them. The wellspring of their art, their greatness, is in not being respectable."

There is nothing respectable about James Fargo's "Forced Vengeance" starring Chuck Norris, but it's Americanized kung-fu comfort food that's hit the spot numerous times in my life — and, nowadays, action sub-genres needn't be Americanized to connect with U.S. viewers because action is a universal language. It's exposition, fight, plot, fight, more plot, fight, and so on. And these foreign-made films are so formulaic that you know precisely what's going on even if you watch them without subtitles.

This is how a French knock-off of "Taken" can find itself atop Netflix's streaming top 10 at the outset of 2025.

According to FlixPatrol, the Rodolphe Lauga-directed "Ad Vitam" has been the most popular movie on Netflix since it debuted three days ago. The French flick stars Guillaume Canet (a prolific actor-director probably best known to U.S. viewers as Leonardo DiCaprio's rival for Virginie Ledoyen's affections in "The Beach") as a disgraced cop whose pregnant wife (Stéphane Caillard) is kidnapped and held hostage by bad guys who need Canet to employ his particular set of skills for their benefit. Check out the film's trailer on YouTube, and you'll see Canet running across rooftops, discharging firearms, riding a motorcycle, and doing a bit of parkour as he attempts to guarantee Caillard's safety.

We're squarely in "Taken"-ville here, a place where a veteran actor like Canet could perhaps build himself a sturdy one-man-army franchise. The film has yet to receive enough reviews from Metacritic-approved critics to merit a rating, but RogerEbert.com's Monica Castillo dinged the film with a one-and-a-half-star review for falling short in the character department. Again, we're not looking for high art out of "Ad Vitam," but you do need an emotional buy-in to catch that quick third-act high; otherwise, you might as well watch a random UFC fight.

As one of the most popular movies on Netflix right now, millions of people all over the world are giving it a go, and at 95 minutes, it's not much of a time commitment. If you like watching highly trained badasses rescue their kidnapped spouses, this could be your kind of action trash.