Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Heart of Stone’ on Netflix, a Tedious Action-Franchise Hopeful Starring a Bland Gal Gadot

This summer’s Very Expensive Netflix Movie is Heart of Stone, a twisty spy thriller-slash-action extravaganza starring Gal Gadot as, uh, Elizabethan Hunt? Yeah, sure, Elizabethan Hunt, because the movie seems to really want to be compared to the benchmark franchise starring whatshisname from Top Gun. Does anything really compare to said franchise? Yeah, a couple of things, in terms of sheer adrenaline-rush thrills, but I’m here to confirm the conclusion you’ve likely already arrived at: This ain’t one of those things. We all want to see Gadot become an above-the-title star, and she works across from Jamie Dornan, who’s rehabbed his career after being lambasted for that 50 Shades shit. But this movie? I finished watching it 20 minutes ago and I’ve already forgotten it. This is why true-pro critics take lots of notes, people.  

HEART OF STONE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A MOUNTAIN IN ITALY: Yes, this is one of those movies with all-caps subtitles bragging to us about all the cool places the movie production team got to work – or got to emulate with CGI. Rachel Stone (Gadot) is a humble tech nerd working on a team of MI6 agents – played by Dornan, Paul Ready and Jing Lucy – attempting to infiltrate a remote crazy-ass illegal nightclub-casino so they can nab an arms dealer. Some of her secret-agent pals work the floor while she tappity-tappity-taps at her laptop, hacking into things and whatnot. Normally, she doesn’t get out of the van, but this time she has to, for reasons too boring to get into. And of course, the whole thing goes to crap, because how else are we going to learn that she’s not a mild-mannered dweeb, but actually the super-extra-secret agent among these secret agents? She cracks some bad-guy skulls and snatches a parachute and gliiiiiiiiiiiiiides down the mountainside, assisted by the voice in her earpiece, a man known as the Jack of Hearts (Matthias Schweighofer), who gives her a little digital green line to follow – she must have fancy high-tech contact lenses? – because that route has a higher probability of success than others. The Jack can see everything that happens everywhere, and calculates probabilities on the fly, which only adds to Stone’s unstoppable badassery.

So, yes, Stone is a secret spy among secret spies. She belongs to The Charter, a covert peacekeeping organization with no affiliation to any nation. The org possesses a superdupercomputer known as The Heart, which, if I’m interpreting things correctly, can see and hear and do anything ever, except maybe manipulate matter. Is it AI? It is if the movie wants to pretend to be relevant to 2023 audiences. Her colleagues whisper about The Charter, which seems to be a myth; they don’t know Stone is the Nine of Hearts until the plot needs them to know, which is not now, but coming soon. When she meets with her Charter boss Nomad (Sophie Okonedo), she reminds Stone of something she doesn’t need to remind her of but that the screenwriters think we, the movie-watchers need to hear although we already pretty much know it: “You know what you signed up for – no relationships, no friends, no poolside tete-a-tete. What we do is too important.” So much for that flirtatious bit with Dornan that happened a few minutes prior. Stone has to go home and snuggle with all her empty Chinese-takeout containers, I guess.

Now, what might happen if some evildoers decide they need to get their hands on The Heart and use it for nefarious purposes? We’re about to find out, although we already saw this plot in Dead Reckoning Part One, so don’t expect anything too revelatory. This is about when the twists get to contorting, so I’ll tread carefully, but it’s worth noting that The Heart is kept on a drone-blimp cruising at 80,000 feet. Stone’s attempts to thwart the bad guys take her way up there, and also to LISBON, PORTUGAL and LONDON, ENGLAND and SENEGAL and ICELAND. There’s a scene that’s a Charter equivalent of turn-in-your-gun-and-badge, a motorcycle chase on Icelandic roads that look incredibly slippery, some LENS FLARE floating across Okonedo and plenty of time to scroll through your Insta feed, an act that’s almost as mindless as watching this movie. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Heart of Stone plays like all the deleted scenes from the Mission: Impossible movies, stitched together and run through some plotification software. It’s not as witless as that other overpriced Gadot/Netflix junkpile, Red Notice, but is more witless than 2022’s overpriced Netflix junkpile The Gray Man.

Performance Worth Watching: Nobody here is bad, per se. Just generic. So this award goes to anyone who guts out this thing to the end credits and pretends to care what happens, because that’d be quite the Oscar-worthy performance. 

Memorable Dialogue: This is what passes for clever werdz in this movie: 

Jack of Hearts, in Stone’s earpiece: Three vehicles, lots of guns!

Stone: Yeah, I can tell by the bullets!

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Heart of Stone struggles to inspire a single giveashit. It’s unburdened by things like style and originality, because that stuff just gets in the way of its ability to fill your brain with beige paste for two hours, and occupy a slot in the Netflix Top 10 for a weekend. The streamer’s goal is to spin the film into a franchise, which inspires one to conceptualize the sequels: Ryan Reynolds IS Paul Granite in Club of Granite! Charlize Theron IS Felicia Spade in Spade of Coal! Chris Evans IS Carl Diamond in Diamond of Diamond! The formula is ripe for the type of flavorless, endlessly chewable cud Heart of Stone delivers, I tell you. RIPE.

Real talk: Action movies are often little more than thrilling set pieces strung together with exposition. The good ones use savvy filmmaking and conceptual ingenuity to make those set pieces memorable, and get your glutes all tensed up. Heart of Stone is not memorable. It evaporates quicker than a droplet of piss tumbling toward the surface of Mercury. By the end of the movie, you’ll have forgotten the beginning. It’s so formulaic, it should be satire. It feels like a fake movie from The Simpsons or Seinfeld. Shoulda titled it Prognosis Negative, or Fatal Discharge. 

None of the dialogue here is worth listening to; it’s just deadass yammering. You’ll step on the one-liners and be ready to move on long before scenes are over. Soulless characters just prattle on about civilization’s inevitable destruction if our hero doesn’t get the job done – not that it’s ever in question, mind you. We also know Tom Cruise will never get killed off, but his films successfully work around our incredulity and tap into our irrational emotions, which is the type of storytelling sleight-of-hand that this movie can only dream about. Heart of Stone attempts to be something more than an escapist foofaraw by having its protagonist push back against high-tech AI in lieu of trusting her instincts, but the movie just isn’t smart enough to recognize the screaming irony here: It’s a pretty big cog in the machine whose algorithm is trying to feed you empty-calorie mediocrities like this. 

Our Call: Heart of Stone? More like Heart of Clone! SKIP IT.  

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.