Ad Vitam is a well-made French action thriller that succeeds in its technical execution but stumbles with its core narrative. Guillaume Canet delivers a raw, believable performance as Franck, and the opening home invasion sequence is genuinely tense and frightening. The film does a great job showing the grit of elite GIGN training, and the practical stunts feel much more grounded than your typical Hollywood blockbuster.
However, the "government conspiracy" at the heart of the story is where the movie loses its footing. The idea that the French domestic intelligence (DGSI) would go to such extreme, "dirty" lengths—including kidnapping a pregnant woman and trying to assassinate a former elite serviceman—to cover up a botched robbery feels highly unrealistic. It shifts the movie from a grounded police drama into a cynical political fantasy that doesn't quite match the realistic tone of the action. Furthermore, the film is dominated by an incredibly long flashback that takes up nearly half the runtime, which kills the momentum of the present-day search for Franck's wife.