The late-summer action franchise starter Heart of Stone has Gal Gadot and, well, not much else to draw in potential viewers. She deserves all the credit for the streaming numbers here since Fifty Shades of Grey actor Jamie Dornan and Wild Rose director Tom Harper do not have nearly the rabid fanbase as this film’s leading star. To all those Gadot addicts looking for your next fix: even you should be wary of watching Netflix’s Heart of Stone.
Gal Gadot’s Impossible Mission
The creators behind Heart of Stone, the latest in standard action fare that pops up straight-to-streaming about once a month, had big plans for Gadot’s globetrotting Rachel Stone (codename “Nine of Hearts”) and the secret organization that doles out her missions. Based around a predictive A.I. that uses every available data in the world to guide peacekeeping operatives, Heart of Stone sets up its spy tale with a range of agents, villains, and world powers all fighting for control over the most powerful force in the world. But there’s a critical problem: if this sounds vaguely familiar to typical action movie-goers, you might recognize the story from 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
Perhaps noticing this unfortunate coincidence of artificial intelligence guiding the heroes and villains of this secret agent universe, Netflix generated viral attention around the allegedly hype-worthy midpoint twist. If Gadot did not attract enough viewers, this promise of a twist upped the numbers to break Heart of Stone into Netflix’s top ten film list. So you do not have to waste your time, here is how this attempted franchise origin story breaks down in every possible facet.
Gal Gadot in ‘Heart of Stone’
Good Action Writers and Directors Are Hard To Come By
Comic book writer Greg Rucka lucked out that his self-adaptation of The Old Guard got a seasoned director (Gina Prince-Blythewood) to shape his condensed screenplay into a genre-blending blast of action fun. In Heart of Stone, Rucka has no one to hide his faults; Tom Harper poorly balances CGI with some uninspired direction of the occasional stunt, something that filmmakers cannot get away with in the era of John Wick and Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible movies. Heart of Stone is inarguably ugly, with a near-constant filter of grey, black, and brown across the board, but the most at fault here is the screenplay, which never even tries to fill in the convoluted plot holes or flesh out a character in an imaginative manner.
Those who come only for the twist will likely turn the TV off after the halfway-point reveal. If you have ever seen an action movie, you have essentially seen this plot development happen. Lackluster sequels like A Good Day To Die Hard and Spectre have relied on it for a cheap thrill for years, and new movies like The 355 and Heart of Stone continue to pretend like this is a unique idea. For all its forced ploys at creating viral content, Netflix’s pathetic baiting claims cannot conceal the incontestable unoriginality and lifelessness in every sequence of its new action movie.
Heart of Stone is streaming now on Netflix, but any other streaming original of the genre, apart from Apple TV+’s Ghosted, would be a better substitute. Don’t let Gadot and Netflix drag you into another unacceptable spy flick.
