A new title is earning plenty of views on Netflix. The Informer, the 2019 British crime thriller film that was met with mixed reviews from critics upon its theatrical release, has just become the newest title to break into the streamer’s top 10, currently ranking as one of the most popular titles on the streaming platform.
Directed by Andrea Di Stefano and written by Matt Cook, The Informer is based on Roslund & Hellström’s novel Three Seconds. The movie follows Pete Koslow, a former special operations soldier who now works as an informant for the FBI to help dismantle the Polish mafia’s drug trade in New York. However, when an undercover NYPD cop dies when the FBI’s operation goes wrong, Pete is coerced into returning to Bale Hill, the prison he previously served time in for manslaughter, to take down the cartel from the inside. The Informer stars Joel Kinnaman, alongside Rosamund Pike, Common, Ana de Armas, and Clive Owen.
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The film arrived on Netflix on Friday, Aug. 5 and initially had a slow start on the platform, eventually breaking into the top movies on Netflix U.S. and rising to a No. 5 ranking. It held that spot for multiple days before falling to no. 7 on Aug. 18, according to FlixPatrol data for the film. It then bounced between the No. 10 and No. 9 spot, with its most recent placing sitting at No. 10. It currently falls behind titles like The Gray Man, Inside the Mind of a Cat, Uncharted, Day Shift, and Look Both Ways, which currently claims the No. 1 spot. The film has not made it onto the overall streaming chart, with highlights the most popular titles on the platform among both movies and series.
The movie’s Netflix success in the U.S. comes as a bit of a surprise given the lackluster reception it received upon its 2019 release. The Informer only holds a 64% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “The Informer may prove a passable diversion for less demanding thriller fans, but most of its ingredients have been recycled from superior entries in the genre.” It fared about the same on Metacritic, where it received a weighted average score of 61 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating “mixed or average reviews.”
The audience reception wasn’t any better, with the film’s Rotten Tomatoes audience score sitting at 61%. Still, The Informer seems to be drawing new popularity following its Netflix release, earning enough views to cement its place as one of the most popular titles currently available for streaming on Netflix U.S. At this time, Netflix hasn’t released viewership data for the movie, so it remains unclear just how many subscribers have pressed play on The Informer.