Final Rating: 3.5/5
Sacrifice, directed by Romain Gavras, is a hilarious political satire skewering performative activism at the highest levels of society. Reminiscent of other recent “laugh at the rich people” films like Rumours and Triangle of Sadness, Sacrifice features an ensemble of big names giving excellent performances as fictional bigger names, and isn’t afraid to be very on-the-nose with its messaging. Like those films, however, Sacrifice isn’t quite as edgy as it sets out to be: when the film works, it really works, but once it starts running out of steam, it starts to border on the very disingenuity Gavras intends to critique.
Sacrifice takes place at a climate change gala put on by a tech billionaire, Ben Bracken (Vincent Cassel). Invited to the gala is Mike Tyler (Chris Evans), an Oscar-nominated actor appearing in public again for the first time in a year following a public meltdown at the release of his last film. When Bracken announces his company’s intention to strip-mine the sea floor – for the environment, obviously – Tyler takes to the stage to chastise his fellow glitterati for the callousness of pretending to care about the environment while actively engaging in its destruction. Tyler is many things – impulsive, insecure, and a bit dim – but he’s also sincere.
Shortly after, the gala is hijacked by eco-terrorists, who announce they’ll be throwing three guests into a volcano.
Early into Sacrifice, Gavras shows a neon sign that says “Make Earth Cool Again.” Scattered around the gala are other signs, each with a similarly cringeworthy slogan. The gala itself is full of posturing and bold statements that really mean nothing.
That Gavras uses these slogans as set-pieces is a brilliant choice. After Tyler’s outburst, he exits the main event space into an empty hall with a slogan at one end. As Tyler looks at the slogan – something vacuous but topical, like “be the hero of the earth” – the camera pans around to reveal eco-terrorists lying in wait behind the sign. The people taking action are literally the people behind the slogan, while the person seeing the slogan just sees words.
At the gala, Gavras gets a lot of mileage out of absurd pseudoactivism. The standout scene is a musical number introduced with “these artists are bold enough to ask the question: what if dance could save the world?” What follows is a mostly-twerking performance featuring two dozen dancers in BDSM gear as Charli XCX sings about Mother Earth dying. When the terrorists enter halfway through, the guests don’t even bat an eye, thinking it’s part of the performance.
Eventually, the gala has to end, as the terrorists kidnap Bracken, Tyler, and Katie (one of the singers, played by Ambika Mod), and embark with them on a journey to the local volcano, where they will be sacrificed to avert disaster.
The film after the gala loses a bit of steam. The cast is significantly reduced, and the stakes become too real to allow for the density of jokes in the first half. The focus of the film’s critique also shifts. Instead of commenting on how the rich and powerful often lie, Gavras looks for the sincerity within those lies.
Asked about his most deeply held belief, Tyler states “I believe that stories can change the world.” That works well for the terrorists’ leader, Mia (Anya Taylor-Joy), who is guided by her own, invented mythology, rather than a climate-science informed reality.
At some level, Gavras puts forward that all sides of climate activism are guided by stories. The eco-terrorists are guided by a paganistic belief that the volcano is hungry, while the rich are guided primarily by the writing of their own stories. This critique is larger and more abstract than simply “rich people often perform goodness rather than embodying it,” and gets a bit confused as it goes on. Gavras clearly chooses a side – the climate activists are portrayed as violent, but never in the wrong – but by the end, it’s not totally clear what that “side” actually represents. Do the climate activists sincerely care about the earth, or is their primary concern their invented prophecy? Tyler’s concerns, too, feel genuine, but is he genuinely selfless, or is he more interested in boosting his public image by performing selflessness? Gavras sets several interesting questions in Sacrifice, but by trying to address too many, the satire of Sacrifice is weakened.
Sacrifice was seen during the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
Comments