Netflix's One-Man Action Thriller Is Officially One Of Its Most Popular Movies Of All Time

Netflix officially has a new entry into its all-time popular movie list.

The globe-spanning streaming platform is generally best known for its extensive TV library, with the likes of Stranger Things, Wednesday and Squid Game often taking the world by storm upon the release of new seasons. However, as they’ve branched out into blockbuster filmmaking, they’ve also become the home to some of the biggest hits of recent years, namely KPop Demon Hunters, which has a sequel on the way after breaking numerous records, and the Ryan Reynolds, Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot-starring Red Notice, intended to launch a trilogy.

They’ve also taken steps to team with international storytellers for a variety of films, many of which stand up well against some of Netflix’s biggest English movies. From the critically acclaimed monster movie Troll to the grisly shark horror thriller Under Paris, both of whose success spawned sequels on the streamer, audiences are proving just as invested in foreign movies as they are domestic ones.

Guillaume Canet firing a gun in Ad Vitam

One such film that viewers have found themselves taken with is that of Ad Vitam, which has now joined Netflix’s all-time most popular movie ranking. Led by The Program‘s Guillaume Canet, the film centers on Franck Lazarev, a former operator of the elite tactical unit of the French National Gendarmerie, the GIGN, as he narrowly escapes an attempted murder and races to save his pregnant wife after she’s kidnapped by those tied to a wider state conspiracy.

Just over one year after its January 2025 debut, Ad Vitam has climbed to join the Top 10 Most Popular Non-English Movies of all-time list on Netflix, sitting in the No. 9 spot on the chart. The film has thus far amassed 63,100,000 views, at the time of writing, equating to 103,000,000 hours watched around the world. It has risen above the Matthias Schweighöfer-led sci-fi thriller Brick, which is now situated in the No. 10 spot on the list.

It certainly doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that a film like Ad Vitam has enjoyed a steady rise to becoming one of Netflix’s most popular movies of all-time. Even after the conclusion of the Liam Neeson-led Taken franchise, the one-man army genre has remained alive and popular around the world, thanks to everything from the John Wick movies to Denzel Washington’s Equalizer franchise, the World War II-set Sisu movie series and recently released The Furious.

Even more notably is that many of the titles on Netflix’s all-time popular movies, both English and non-English, could be viewed as being part of the aforementioned action subgenre. The Taron Egerton-led Carry-On overcame comparisons to Die Hard to set a record for the most views in its opening week than any other Netflix film released in 2024, while the Jeanne Goursaud-starring Exterritorial spent 12 weeks in Netflix’s Top 10 across 79 countries and now holds the No. 4 spot on their all-time Most Popular Non-English Movies, as well as being the most successful German release for the platform.

With Ad Vitam now one of Netflix’s most popular movies of all-time, it will now be interesting if the streamer looks to build on its success with development of a sequel. The first film left plenty of potential plot threads for a follow-up to explore, and with an established fanbase for its characters, a sequel could prove an even bigger hit for Netflix.