Netflix has garnered something of a reputation when it comes to the action genre. Indeed, whether it’s an older action thriller soaring on the charts, or a brand new streaming exclusive adding to the dogpile of backflips, guns, and explosions, Netflix has consistently managed to be an absolute bastion in the realm of mediocre-to-insulting additions to the zeitgeist.
It’s peculiar, then, that it keeps insisting on plugging these exclusives as their marquee releases; a treatment they appear to have given Heart of Stone, the Gal Gadot-led action spy thriller film dropping on the streamer today, and which, sadly, appears to be continuing the exhausting cycle that Netflix has found itself in.
It seems like Heart of Stone‘s title was a bit too prophetic regarding how the film would go on to be received by critics; as it sits at an abysmal 25 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, things aren’t looking up for Gadot and company.
Courtney Howard’s review of the film for The AV Club criticized House of Stone‘s action sequences (which, for an action movie, isn’t something you want to drop the ball on), noting a lack of inventiveness and urgency that immediately calls its high aspirations into question.
…the mediocrity extends to the action, which lacks oomph, interest and a propulsive sense of fun. Stunt choreography fails to provide awe and amazement, due partially to its raggedy editing and close-up framing. From the car pursuit in Lisbon to skydiving onto and off of a blimp in West Africa, these sequences are predictable and perfunctory, rather than ingenious and imaginative.
Slant Magazine‘s Clayton Dillard held nothing back, suggesting that the film is one of the most dire examples of trying to be a product rather than a movie.
It’s a horrifying and unearned bit of business in an otherwise insipid spy thriller, primarily because it never justifies its inclusion beyond its superficial, if dubious, shock value.
And Josh Spiegel of /Film, rating Heart of Stone two out of a possible 10 stars, compared it and its AI-centric plot unfavorably to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. A rather lopsided juxtaposition, perhaps, but that’s what it gets for trying so poorly to stack up to the Tom Cruise-led franchise.
Some of the action scenes here, like one in which Stone does a HALO jump out of a plane in the middle of a stormy sky or another in which she is able to parachute to safety by using another person’s chute while in mid-freefall, call back so strongly to the Christopher McQuarrie-era “Mission” films; it’s almost amazing to see such direct and unsuccessful cribbing.
Heart of Stone marks another swing and a miss from the streamer, and at this point, we’re just hoping it will do us all a favor and put down this particular bat until it learns how to play ball in the action space.
Heart of Stone is now available to stream on Netflix, if this hefty handful of lambasting hasn’t deterred you.
