Chris Evans is back, and he’s ready to save the world once again. No, I’m not referring to “Avengers: Doomsday” or even a sequel to “Red One” (i.e. the Christmas-themed Evans and Dwayne Johnson Amazon team-up that definitely doesn’t feel like a mass hallucination), I mean “Sacrifice.” French filmmaker Romain Gavras’s jarring mix of action, comedy, and drama premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it was snatched up by Netflix. But it’s only just made its way onto the streamer, which, when coupled with the not-so-excited response from last year’s TIFF attendees, doesn’t seem to bode well.
Yet, there’s something to this one. Evans stars here as Mike Tyler, an insecure A-lister whose career is on the rocks. (Is there any other kind these days? Even Tom Cruise is feeling the heat post-“Digger.”) Hoping to reignite his fading stardom, Mike struts his stuff at a ritzy benefit gala in Greece, only for a pack of ecoterrorists to storm the castle. Their zealously serious leader Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy) then declares that they require three captives. What for? Why, to fulfill a prophecy calling for a selfless hero (wink wink, nudge nudge, Mike) to fling themself into a raging volcano and save humanity, of course!
With a cast that also includes Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek Pinault, Sam Richardson, John Malkovich, and Charli XCX, “Sacrifice” repurposes the general premise of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s rom-com curio “Joe Versus the Volcano” for our age of climactic catastrophes and eat-the-rich sendups. So, it’s not surprising that folks are having a little trouble getting on its wavelength.
Chris Evans gets his shot at being a real hero in Sacrifice
I mentioned “Digger” earlier, and “Sacrifice” is absolutely cut from the same cloth as Alejandro G. Ińárritu’s anti-satire satire. Each film raises big questions about the value of art in the face of our dire present circumstances, giving their leads (both of whom have firmly established their action movie hero credentials) a chance to wrestle with their own feelings of hopelessness and anxiety that they themselves are merely cogs in the profit-driven, billionaire-steered machine that is driving the world to ruin. “Digger” puts a much more meta twist on this idea than “Sacrifice,” but you can see what attracted Chris Evans to Romain Gavras’s film all the same.
Writing for Vulture, Bilge Ebiri correctly argues that “Sacrifice” allows Evans to tap into the very quality that endeared the masses to his portrayal of Steve Rogers (aka Captain America) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the first place: “his innate dorkiness.” Evans’ energy pairs well with Anya Taylor-Joy’s poe-faced, fervent turn in the movie, and the duo’s characters gradually emerge as fitting foils in a story that “starts off as an effective satire (…) and then transforms into a quest narrative, at which point its humor becomes more conceptual,” as Ebiri later puts it.
Again, that doesn’t make “Sacrifice” the easiest of sells, but at least it’s got a pulse, and the whole thing looks a whole lot better than your typical Netflix exclusive thanks to its awe-inspiring visuals of nature and decadent interiors (which were shot on-location in places like Greece and Bulgaria). So, if you want to watch Chris Evans get introspective before he suits back up for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ reunion tour with “Doomsday,” maybe fire this one up on Netflix.
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