Last December, Pedro Pascal established himself as the king of streaming after topping the most-watched lists across three separate platforms by appearing in Netflix’s We Can Be Heroes, HBO Max’s Wonder Woman 1984 and Disney Plus’ The Mandalorian. And while he might not be dominating the rankings of multiple services simultaneously, Anthony Mackie is nonetheless gunning for the crown.
Not content with his starring role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Synchronic has nabbed the top spot on the Netflix most-watched list today despite only being added to the library yesterday, making it the second sci-fi movie this year where Mackie takes top billing that’s managed to reach the summit of the viewership chart, following hot on the heels of January’s Outside the Wire.
After his roles in Io, Black Mirror and Altered Carbon, as well as the aforementioned duo, it’s evident that Mackie and Netflix sci-fi go hand-in-hand. Synchronic sees the actor co-star with Jamie Dornan as longtime best friends and paramedics, who show up to a series of grisly and unexplainable crime scenes. The latter’s daughter soon goes missing, and it turns out everything is connected somehow via time travel.
It’s another uniquely fascinating journey into the world of existential genre filmmaking from Benson and Moorhead, and Synchronic is finally finding an audience having initially premiered in September 2019 before being released onto VOD last October to little fanfare. Reviews have been solid, and it currently holds an 80% score on Rotten Tomatoes, while a whole lot of Netflix subscribers have clearly gone out of their way to check it out given how quickly the movie ascended to the number one position.