‘Heart Of Stone’ Review: Netflix Does Big-Budget Action At Its Worst

‘Heart Of Stone’ Review: Netflix Does Big-Budget Action At Its Worst. Gal Gadot’s latest is a pseudo-‘Mission: Impossible’ with none of the fun. There’s precisely one inventive, original action beat in Tom Harper’s Heart of Stone, involving two bikes and a garbage truck on an Icelandic mountainside. It whizzes by so quickly, and with such haphazard framing and assembly, that its impact barely registers. Unfortunately, this is indicative of the rest of the movie, which is the latest in a line of potential action franchise-starters from Netflix that feels dead on arrival. Similar to The Gray Man and Red Notice, Heart of Stone cobbles together scenes and ideas from far superior films.

On one hand, Heart of Stone has the misfortune of sharing major plot similarities with the rollicking Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which hit cinemas less than two months ago. On the other hand, it also feels like an intentional attempt to ape the magic of earlier Mission: Impossible films, only it lacks the necessary sleight of hand. Worst of all, its sprawling ensemble — led by Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot, Fifty Shades front man Jamie Dornan, and Bollywood superstar Alia Bhatt — ends up a charisma black hole. This is partially owed to the sheer lack of material they’re offered by the script, but the problems at the heart of this flimsy action knock-off are multifaceted and run bone deep.