Forgotten Idris Elba movie storms onto Netflix top 10 list

Idris Elba in Bastille Day / The Take — (Image credit: Studiocanal)

Not only does streaming giant Netflix have a massive library of great originals, but it’s also fantastic for giving older movies and shows a second wind with a new audience. Just a few days after 2018 flop Mortal Engines became a smash hit, a new mid-2010s movie is proving popular with streaming fans.

It’s 2016 thriller Bastille Day that’s storming (if you’ll pardon the pun) Netflix’s top 10 movies list, with it sitting at sixth spot in the UK at the time of writing. The movie was added to Netflix on Saturday, July 15, so it’s only taken two days to shoot up the rankings.

Bastille Day, known as The Take in some countries, isn’t about the historical event or the holiday, but a bank heist in modern-day France. It stars Idris Elba as a CIA agent trying to stop the plot, who has to enlist the help of a wandering pickpocket played by Richard Madden. Kelly Reilly, Charlotte Le Bon and José Garcia also play in smaller roles.

You may not have heard of the movie, and that’s little wonder. When it first game out, Bastille Day was hurt by its bad reviews, but it was ultimately ruined by bad timing. The movie touches on elements of terrorism in France; in the UK the movie was delayed due to the tragic terror attacks in Paris in November 2015, and in France, the movie spent only a few days in theatres before it was pulled due to another attack in Nice in July of the year.

On Rotten Tomatoes, at the time of writing Bastille Day has both a critic and audience score of under 50%, but fans of action thrillers may still want to check the movie out.

This may be a bigger draw for fans of Idris Elba though, as it’s easy to forget that the British action and drama star hasn’t been starring in movies for that long. Case in point: Rotten Tomatoes’ aggregated consensus for the movie refers to the man as “an action hero in waiting“. Since the movie, Elba has had much bigger roles in Marvel movies, several Fast and Furious instalments, The Suicide Squad, The Harder They Fall, Hijack and much more.

Several other Bastille Day stars have had huge rises in fame since the movie came out, with Richard Madden starring in Prime Video’s huge spy show Citadel and Kelly Reilly playing a main character in the massive US drama show Yellowstone.

While TV fans find new additions on Netflix all the time, the streamer is slower at adding original movies, so the fact that there are overlooked older movies getting added all the time means there’s always something worth watching.

Tom is the streaming and ecommerce editor at What to Watch, covering streaming services in the US and UK.

As the site's streaming expert he covers new additions, hidden gems, round-ups and big news for the biggest VOD platforms like Netflix, Apple TV Plus, Disney Plus, Prime Video and Tubi. He also handles the site's articles on how to watch various movies, TV shows, sports, live events and classic box sets, and coverage on hardware like TVs, soundbars and streaming sticks.

You can commonly find him at film festivals, seeing classic movies shown on the big screen, or going to Q&As from his favorite film-makers and stars.