Ad Vitam

First movie of 2025...and it's a bit of a dud.

Firstly, a positive. There's some pretty cool action scenes here. I'm not familiar with French cinema but the main actor Guillaume Canet was great and really sold me on his tough guy persona. He really was the emotional core of the story, aside from just being an outright badass. The dude does everything : parkour, driving, martial arts....you name it!

However, "Ad Vitam" really struggled to hold my attention throughout its short run time, and just comes across as a cheaper and inferior version of the "Mission Impossible" series. The story didn't grip me at all. The majority of the film is one big flashback that doesn't even get to the main plot introduced at the start of the film until just over an hour in. For an action film, it's incredibly slow and plodding, and doesn't seem to have any momentum or pace until it suddenly ramps up in the last 30 minutes. It feels like a solid 40 minute pilot episode of a TV series stretched out to 95 minutes to be considered feature length.

Overall, it's not a film I'd recommend. It's typical of what you'd expect from a January Netflix film I guess!