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‘Ad Vitam’ Review: Guillaume Canet Tries to Launch a Netflix Action Franchise in Overstuffed Thriller
Guillaume Canet co-wrote and stars in an energetic suspense vehicle that’s caught between modest character moments and over-the-top action set-pieces.
Then, the future spouses were newly graduated from a two-year training program for GIGN, the primarily anti-terrorist tactical unit of France’s police forces (which belatedly explains how even a woman very close to giving birth nearly overpowered agents of an armed home invasion). Also tossed in are picturesque but gratuitous use of famous tourist landmarks as background, near-superheroic training montages, credible intimate character dynamics, a ruthless villain (Johan Heldenbergh as Vanaken) and action that in the home stretch goes absurdly over-the-top. But “Ad Vitam” (i.e. “for life,” suggested here as a motto among GIGN recruits) doesn’t begin to meld its disparate factors into an organic whole, instead seeming like an unresolved compromise between warring commercial strategies.
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