It would be nice if Netflix were to surprise everybody and making a blockbuster action movie that wasn’t an aggressively uninteresting slog to get through, but Heart of Stone has arrived with a bang to make it clear the streaming service has no interest in changing its ways.
Cut from the same identikit cloth that’s blighted many a star-powered epic to have hit the streaming service over the years, A-lister Gal Gadot gets sucked into a vortex of cliched story beats, sketchy CGI, and formulaic action sequences that drags on for what feels like an eternity until the sequel-baiting conclusion is reached.
It’s par for the course for Netflix’s foray into big budget territory to disappoint – with Heart of Stone even carrying the requisite disappointing Rotten Tomatoes score of 30 percent to hammer it home even further – but it’s just as nailed-on that virtually every single one of them without fail will debut right at the top of the most-watched charts.
Sure enough, then, director Tom Harper’s unstoppably pedestrian globetrotting tale of espionage, subterfuge, double-crossing, and MacGuffins galore has nabbed the number one spot on the platform’s worldwide rankings per FlixPatrol, having seized the summit in a colossal 84 countries.
Having fared almost exactly the same as Red Notice and The Gray Man in terms of being trounced by critics while engaging audiences across the face of the planet, we can only assume that Gadot will get her wish and a brand new spy saga will be born. Hopefully, the next one will be a damn sight more interesting.
