The Latin title “Ad Vitam” doesn’t translate to “over the top,” which might be the biggest letdown in this brisk — once it gets going — French action picture.

A star vehicle conceived by Gullaume Canet, (“All Time High”), a star since “Tell No One” and “Love Me if You Dare” came out twenty years ago, it’s designed to show off his own fitness and dazzling stunt work as an ex-cop is chased up and down and all around Paris, through Versailles — and over it.

Franck is the son of a climber, whose “Ad Vitam” (for life) dictum he’s lived by, and which explains why we meet him hanging from ropes over Basilique du Sacré-Cœur on Montmatre when we meet him. He and a team are dangling and rappelling up and down one of the great landmarks of Paris, inspecting and documenting structural cracks and the like.

When Franck almost meets with an accident that isn’t an accident, he chases down the goon who tampered with his lines. The villain is rescued by one of those big, omnipresent Mercedes vans that all the best bad guys — in or out of government — motor about Europe in. Franck knows what’s up.

His very pregnant wife, Leo (Stéphane Caillard of “The Take” and “Get In”) has an idea of what’s going on. They come home to a ransacked apartment. It’s the second ransacking in the past few weeks. He used to be a cop. What’s he got that “they” want?

Because Leo used to be with the elite GIGN (tactical) unit herself. She knows Franck was sacked and that the reasons for it eat at him. He’s got something he hides on the roof of their apartment building, accessible only through their window, climbing up a gutter and clambering between chimneys. It’s a “key.”

When one last ransacking by ninja-clad commandoes with masks, police armbands and a relentlessly vicious leader (Johan Heldenbergh, terrifically vile) ends with Leo kidnapped and Franck facing an ultimatum, he’s in a mad dash to recruit ex-comrades in arms (Nassim Lyes), dodge the police who believe he’s committed a murder and fend off the “bad” agents who want that damned key.

Cameraman turned director Rodolphe Lauga — he shot “The Transporter” TV series — is saddled with a cumbersome script that stops the picture cold as we’re treated to an ineptly-long, montage-filled flashback about how Franck met Leo — at the Academy — their training, early assignments and obvious attraction.

Eventually, we know, they’ll get around to what this “key” is hiding. But Lauga and Canet, co-writers of the screenplay, take a movie-numbing long time to show us that.

They atone for that with a fight/trick/chase/shoot-out finale that has to be seen to be believed. Franck’s got mad parkour and climbing skills. But that’s not all he’ll show off trying to save his two-fisted wife, his life and his reputation.

“Ad Vitam” is competently shot and cut and works well enough for long enough stretches to recommend. But equally long stretches of training and graduation and karaoke celebrating kill its momentum.

And that chase at the end is like “Mission: Impossible” played for laughs. I mean, I love sight seeing over and around Paris as much as the next guy, but come on.

Rating: TV-MA, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Guillaume Canet, Stéphane Caillard, Alexis Manenti, Zita Hanrot, Nassim Lyes and Johan Heldenbergh

Credits: Directed by Rodolphe Lauga, scripted by Guillaume Canet, David Corona and Rodolphe Lauga. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:38