AKA (2023 film)

Adam Franco (played by Alban Lenoir) is a multi-identity specials ops agent working on behalf of the French government under the helm of a mysterious Kruger (played by Thibault de Montalembert). After finishing a first mission in Tunisia, he is assigned a new mission: flush out and eliminate a Sudanese warlord, Moktar Al Tayeb (played by Kevin Layne), who is the prime suspect of a bombing in a Paris hotel.

To get closer to his target, he infiltrates the Pastore crime syndicate and earns the trust of the gangster boss, Victor Pastore (played by Eric Cantona) by demonstrating his physical power during altercations with rival gangsters. In the process, he unexpectedly bonds with Victor's step-son, Jonathan (Noé Chabbat).

Under his brutish demeanor, Adam feels compelled to put his life (guns and fists) on the line when Jonathan gets kidnapped by Amet, the head of the rival gang. Endangering his colleagues by putting his official mission aside, Adam tears through the rival compound to save the boy, not without being seriously wounded. Going back to his mission and realizing his colleague is not answering his calls, Adam breaks into a shop close to where he left him to visualize the security footage where he confirms the presence of Moktar.

Notified by the shop security alarm, the police is ready to arrest him when he explains he is also a police officer and provides his police ID number. The scene is observed by Youssef, one of Victor's lieutenants, who now knows that Adam is a mole and gets ready to execute him. Youssef's call to his team is intercepted by Mona (Adam's colleague and surveillance operator) who will go and shoot the entire team, who were just ready to take Adam out, but ends up mortally wounded in the shoot-out too.

Adam decides to go and finish his mission, finding Moktar in a makeshift hospital, who then reveals why and how he ended up where he is. Kruger wants to clean up and sends two units of elite commandos to take everyone out. Adam miraculously escapes not without making numerous casualties and getting shot again. Victor and his team all get disposed of and Adam is reunited with Victor's son and daughter.

On Rotten Tomatoes, AKA has an approval rating of 75% based on 8 reviews and an average rating of 5.4/10.[1]

Although the Decider[2] berates the simplistic character given to Adam as a superkilling machine that shrugs off bullet wounds and is critical of quality of the intrigue and suspense, they still recommend viewers to stream it as the action is good.

Noel Murray of the Los Angeles Times reviews AKA on in its May 2nd, 2023 and notes that although AKA does not innovate in the undercover genre, he praises the moody Florent Astolfi's cinematography and Etienne Forget's score for adding texture and drive to the movie.[3]

Contrastingly and going for a definitive "no", Smriti Kannan of FILM FUJITIVES calls it a buzzkill with nothing going from it from the start, just endless action scenes.[4]

Roger Moore, a prolific movie critic, gives it only 2 stars out of 5 based on the fact that the "incidents, relationships and even the intrigues here are all over-familiar tropes, which prevents this competently-made thriller ever rise to the level of engaging." [5]

Nevertheless, FlixPatrol presents Netflix ranking data for AKA showing that the movie took and held the top ranking in up to 79 countries including in the United States.[6] Indeed, Eric Debarnot from Benzine (a French language cultural web magazine) talks about an enormous worldwide and well-deserved, if albeit surprising, success.[7]

• AKA on Netflix
• AKA at IMDb