Two weeks into the new year, we have already got our first foreign language Netflix hit of 2025. Ad Vitam is an action thriller by French director Rodolphe Lauga (It’s Complicated), which stars Guillaume Canet, Stéphane Caillard, and Nassim Lyes.
“After escaping an attempted murder, Franck Lazarev (Guillaume Canet) must find his wife Léo (Stéphane Caillard), who has been kidnapped by a mysterious group of armed men,” reads the synopsis on Netflix’s site. “He is caught up by his past as a former member of the French Elite Intervention Squad (GIGN) and pulled into a state affair far beyond his control.”
As you’ll see in the trailer, Léo is pregnant, but the couple is on edge following a series of break-ins at their house. The mysterious home invasions culminate in an attack by a group of masked men who want information from Franck, or they’ll kill Léo.
The comparisons to Taken are hard to ignore, which explains why so many Netflix subscribers rushed to stream Ad Vitam as soon as it debuted on January 10th. After all, who doesn’t love a tense thriller about a man trying to save a loved one?
There aren’t many reviews, but the ones we’ve seen have been mixed. Variety says that while the movie is exciting, “it is increasingly hard to take seriously, as the script veers between gritty thriller terrain to the kind of overscaled set-pieces more apt for James Bond.”
You can stream the French action thriller Ad Vitam on Netflix right now.
