Sean Penn & Idris Elba thriller defies poor reviews to hit Netflix top 10

Sometimes, older and forgotten movies get added to Netflix and become a surprise hit with viewers, but it's rare for a film that's been on the streamer for a while to suddenly hit the top 10 movies list. However, that's just happened.

The Gunman was added to Netflix in October 2022 but it's just made the surprise jump onto Netflix's rankings, sitting at the 10th spot at the time of writing.

The 2015 movie stars Sean Penn as a retired... uh, gunman, who finds a bounty on his head when his ex-boss decides to wipe the record clean on a past job they did in the congo.

As well as Sean Penn in the leading position, a few other big names pop up in various roles: Mark Rylance plays Penn's old ally from his mercenary days, Javier Bardem plays the aforementioned team boss and Penn's love rival, Idris Elba plays an Interpol agent who's monitoring Penn in the modern day and Ray Winstone shows up as... basically himself.

British TV fans might also recognize Prasanna Puwanarajah who plays a doctor for a brief scene, who's been in the likes of Doctor Foster, Patrick Melrose, World on Fire, Ten Percent and The Crown since The Gunman came otu.

When The Gunman came out it wasn't exactly a smash hit, barely making half its budget back and the box office and getting almost universally panned. In fact, at the time of writing it has a 16% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and is only slightly higher at 31% for its audience score, in a rare example of unity between critics and fans.

Clearly Netflix subscribers didn't get the memo though, because its place at #10 on Netflix's top movies list shows that a fair few people are watching the movie.

In a fun twist, the opening credits show that Netflix rival Amazon actually helped make the movie, with an association credit going to Amazon Prime Instant Video (the name of the streaming service until late 2015).

While this possibly isn't the most original movie to ever see a second life on Netflix, it may be worth a watch to action fans, and it's certainly a lot more brutal than the standard fare you see added to the streamer.

Plus, the movie was directed by Pierre Morel, who was coming hot off Taken and From Paris With Love, so fans of the endearing classic dad-action genre might find it appealing.