Adam Driver’s significant star power is breathing new life into one of the actor’s biggest flops thanks to streaming. Though the sci-fi actioner 65 represents the worst-reviewed movie of Driver’s entire career, it apparently generated enough curiosity from audiences to still make a significant mark on its Netflix debut.
65 currently holds the number 2 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 movies this week. That represents quite the comeback for a movie that holds firmly in the mid-30s on Rotten Tomatoes, and barely eked past its production budget, let alone turn a profit at the worldwide box office, according to The Numbers.
We are guessing 65‘s dramatic underdog triumph is in no small part thanks to Driver, who has had a number of critical and commercial darlings on the streaming service specifically, such as Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story and his follow-up White Noise. The latter may not have been as universally praised as 2019’s Oscar-winning Marriage Story, but the satire based on Don DeLillo’s post-modern novel of the same name generated a good amount of respect from critics nonetheless when it debuted last year, including for Driver’s performance.
Let’s face it, the two-time Oscar-nominated actor is not at any risk of ruining his career for one bad day at the office, like 65, especially now that it is experiencing a renaissance on streaming. The survival adventure movie focusing on space-traveling humanoids battling dinosaurs on ancient Earth may not be as iconic as Driver’s turn as Kylo Ren in the modern Star Wars films, but for the casual Netflix audience who just want some random explosions and dino screeches to fall asleep to, it clearly resonates.