I feel like it’s important to always make the distinction between a Netflix-commissioned film and a film acquired by Netflix, because these are films that could have been acquired by anyone. Oftentimes, critics who get lost in the Friday night shuffle of Netflix originals get tripped up when there’s a film that Netflix didn’t actually make. Sacrifice is one of those films. It premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where Netflix did not immediately pick it up, eventually acquiring it in May of this year and slating it for October. Not necessarily the most promising trajectory for a film, but considering there are films that get picked up by lesser distributors and sent into the ether, never to be heard from again unless you’re an expert at scrolling through Tubi, this ended up being a pretty solid deal for Sacrifice. I’m sure the film has its fans, much like some of the other dystopian, climate change-centric apocalyptic films we’ve had recently. I’m thinking about Rumours, with Cate Blanchett. I’m thinking about The End, the apocalyptic musical. I guess even Digger would fall under this umbrella. I think the reason some of these films struggle is because they are made by people who would agree with the characters they are also satirizing. To some extent, it becomes an uphill battle to poke fun at the eccentricities of people when you’re not completely capable of seeing your own reflection and recognizing what it is about you that might be humorous to others, or might be exaggerated in cinematic form to become humorous. Sacrifice has bits and pieces of that, but never fully develops into an entertaining or pointed takedown of its subject matter.
The film boasts an excellent cast, with Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek, John Malkovich, Sam Richardson, and Charli XCX leading the way. I haven’t seen any of the director’s previous work, but somehow he managed to rope everybody into this one. The film allows Chris Evans to deliver what I would consider one of his best performances in a movie that simply doesn’t work. He is absolutely perfect casting for the role of a celebrity on the rocks, trying to rebuild his image and land a part in an upcoming film while also flying out to a climate change summit on an island near Greece. He seems very self-centered, not particularly bright, but charming, and very much a product of a Hollywood system that has supported him and his ideals. This is exactly the kind of character that, if you brought in somebody from the outside looking in, they would recognize as an opportunity to poke fun at actors who often take stands for causes they don’t entirely understand. The film does a little bit of that, but Evans has already presented such a flawed character that it’s hard to tell if he’s flawed because he doesn’t understand the things he’s talking about, or if he’s simply being played as a bit of an idiot. A very charming idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.
My odd reaction to Chris Evans’s performance was that this man could really use a Jerry Maguire right now. He’s got that kind of effortless likability, even in a role where you’re not necessarily supposed to fall in love with his character. He has this undeniable charm that suggests he’s always somehow the hero, even when he’s not, and that he’s always the character you’re supposed to root for, even when he’s doing everything wrong. Looking at what Cameron Crowe was able to do with Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire really made me think it would be wonderful if somebody wrote a similar project for Chris Evans, because I genuinely believe his path to Oscar glory might be through that perfectly threaded combination of comedy and drama. Evans has the ability to make you care about somebody who probably doesn’t deserve your affection, and that’s not an easy thing to accomplish. He’s been looking for the right post-Marvel vehicle to showcase what he’s capable of, and while Sacrifice isn’t that film, his performance suggests he’s much closer to finding it than the quality of the finished product might indicate.
Evans’s character encounters an assortment of eccentric billionaires, climate change enthusiasts, influencers, and celebrities who are deeply involved in this summit, including characters played by Vincent Cassel and Salma Hayek, who are devoting their time and energy to putting on a show about changing the world around them. There’s even an interpretive dance sequence featuring Charli XCX, while Sam Richardson plays Evans’s agent. Everything comes to a halt when Anya Taylor-Joy’s ecoterrorist storms the facility with her miniature army and takes everyone hostage. She believes the spirit of the Earth can communicate with her, and that she understands what needs to happen in order to save the planet, which may or may not end with people needing to jump into a volcano. While I adored Chris Evans, I also have to say Anya Taylor-Joy brings everything she has to a role where a stronger writer would have done considerably more to poke fun at her character’s eccentricities. Taylor-Joy pulls most of those eccentricities out purely through her performance, creating somebody who feels genuinely committed to an absolutely insane worldview. But there’s something about the way the film is structured, and how little it actually has to say through these characters, that leaves it relying almost entirely on its performers to charm an audience into watching a movie that ultimately amounts to very little.
The rest of the supporting cast essentially fleshes out the ensemble without contributing anything particularly meaningful to the storyline, although it certainly gives us a collection of talented actors who can coherently read their dialogue. This is one of the least interesting things Salma Hayek has probably ever done, and I could say much the same for Vincent Cassel, who somehow still hasn’t earned an Oscar nomination despite his extensive career. It’s also back-to-back rotten reviews for Sam Richardson, who appeared in Matchbox the previous week. Granted, he clearly made Sacrifice first, but the timing still puts him in two movies that don’t work right next to each other. John Malkovich is another example of somebody whose presence sounds considerably more exciting on paper than anything the film actually does with him. There’s an enormous amount of talent assembled here, but assembling an impressive cast isn’t the same thing as knowing what to do with them. At some point, the film needs to offer something beyond the novelty of watching recognizable actors participate in increasingly bizarre situations.
Satire is hard. It is a very hard thing to nail, and depending on your worldview, it can either trigger you negatively or positively. If you’re willing to laugh at yourself, satire can and should work, but sometimes satire isn’t written by the right people, and it can come across as disingenuous when it isn’t willing to go all the way. While I hate to suggest that the script probably needed some influence from the other side, I think that’s exactly what could have helped Sacrifice. Sometimes you need somebody who doesn’t share your worldview to point out the things that stand out to them as oddities in the climate change battle. In a weird way, if you asked a climate change denier what they find humorous about the people fighting to save the planet, those observations could provide the foundation for exaggeration. That doesn’t mean agreeing with climate change denial, or giving it legitimacy. It means understanding how people who disagree with you perceive your behavior, and being willing to examine whether there’s something ridiculous about the way you’re presenting yourself. Sometimes, when you believe the battle you’re fighting is just, and that the end result is more important than anything else, you’re willing to give a pass to the things that happen along the way. That’s fertile ground for satire, but only if the filmmakers are willing to acknowledge it.
I think that’s also why Don’t Look Up didn’t work for everybody. It was very insulated in terms of how it looked at itself, not fully capable of, or perhaps not ready to, turn the tables in a way that might have made the film funnier or given it a sharper satirical perspective. That’s what makes films like Sacrifice so frustrating when they don’t work. Theoretically, we agree with the subject matter, but at the same time, why are we here? It’s not being presented to us in a serious manner, but it’s also not being presented in some completely outlandish form, like Moonfall, where our world is in peril because of decisions we’ve made, only to arrive at a completely unrealistic scenario. These films occupy an uncomfortable middle ground where they’re made by people who presumably agree with the causes their characters are fighting for, but the parody never quite materializes. The Broadway musical The Prom actually does this pretty well with its celebrities, who suddenly choose one teenager in a small town to become their life’s mission. It questions the performative quality of their activism and how out of touch with reality they actually are. There’s a little bit of that in Chris Evans’s character here, but Sacrifice never commits to exploring it as thoroughly as it should.
Of course, the best example I can come up with is Tropic Thunder, which absolutely nailed its satire on practically every level. That film isn’t specifically about climate change, where something genuinely important is at stake. It’s about Hollywood, and it has absolutely no problem taking the industry to task for its problematic tropes, self-importance, and absurdities. Sacrifice was likely made by people who believe in climate change and understand that something needs to be done about it, but they also chose to make a movie about people who are performative in their desire to stop it, without being entirely sure how to approach that contradiction. Meanwhile, they’re spending millions of dollars on a cinematic farce that likely didn’t have a negligible carbon footprint itself. There’s potentially a joke right there, but it’s the kind of self-examination the movie never seems particularly interested in pursuing. That inability to fully recognize its own contradictions weighs Sacrifice down and keeps it from becoming the glorious dark comedy it probably should have been from the beginning. This is why comedy legends like Mel Brooks, Christopher Guest, and the Monty Python troupe are so important. They understood how to unpack a subject from every possible angle, allowing everyone to laugh at it while still getting something meaningful out of the story. Satire doesn’t have to abandon its convictions to be funny, but it does have to be willing to interrogate them.
The audio description track here is provided by Descriptive Video Works and narrated by Jamie Lemcheck, which marks a potentially interesting shift in Jamie’s future that I’m excited about. It’s possible she’ll continue working with International Digital Center, but it looks like she may have followed Descriptive Video Works and Liz Gutman, who made the change earlier this year. I love Jamie as a narrator, and I think her work here is excellent. However, I would note to the audio engineer behind this track that it was really obvious the statement identifying the production company, writer, and narrator was recorded separately, because it sounds wildly different from the rest of the audio description when it’s presented. I don’t know if better balancing could have helped, but it very much feels spliced in, whereas the rest of the track is seamless. It’s a relatively minor complaint about an otherwise excellent audio description experience, but one that stood out enough for me to notice.
I wish I could like Sacrifice. I know it has its defenders, and to some extent, I can defend some of the other films I’ve mentioned here as well. But with Sacrifice, I basically have a film I didn’t like starring two actors who are trying desperately to make the most of it, one of whom, Chris Evans, is probably delivering a top-five performance of his career. It really is a perfectly cast role for him, and he does such a wonderful job with it. I just wish the film around him rose to the occasion. Evans needs the right writer, the perfect project, and somebody who understands exactly what it is about him that makes him work. He came awfully close here, and if Sacrifice had been a stronger film, we might have been talking about him as a potential awards contender. Instead, director Romain Gavras and his co-writer Will Arbery have delivered a messy satire that never quite understands how to make its own premise work. It’s not that the film lacks ideas, or even that its ideas are particularly bad. It’s that the execution never rises to the level of its ambitions, leaving the actors to do the heavy lifting while the screenplay wanders around looking for something meaningful to say. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to be something anybody remembers for very long.
It’s an interesting title for a film Netflix is distinctly releasing ahead of its predetermined Oscar contenders, getting it out of the way before the streamer starts releasing the movies it actually wants you to pay attention to. Sacrifice is just that, a sacrifice by Netflix to keep you subscribing until the bigger, more important awards fare arrives. But the frustrating thing is that Sacrifice could have been in that conversation itself with a better screenplay and a director who understood how to fully embrace the absurdity of what he was making. Chris Evans certainly showed up ready to make that movie. Anya Taylor-Joy did too. Unfortunately, everybody else seems to have been working on something slightly different, and the finished product never figures out how to bring those competing ideas together. In a film about people willing to sacrifice everything to save the world, it’s unfortunate that the one thing the filmmakers weren’t willing to sacrifice was their own self-importance.
Rotten: 5.7/10
