Heart of Stone Takes #1 Spot on Netflix Top 10 Despite Poor Reviews

Summary

• Heart of Stone has claimed the number one spot on Netflix’s Top 10 list, indicating its popularity among audiences.
• While the movie has been well-received by viewers, critics have given it a low rating on Rotten Tomatoes due to its thin characters and generic plot.
• Despite its flaws, Heart of Stone provides entertaining and forgettable fun, and Gal Gadot’s performance as an action star remains enjoyable.

The latest Netflix big-budget action outing, Heart of Stone, has proven to be popular with audiences as it takes the number one spot in the streaming platform’s ‘Top 10.’ According to What’s on Netflix, Heart of Stone is now at the tippy top of the Netflix movie list, followed by the likes of Untold: Johnny Football, Despicable Me 2, River Wild, and the Jason Statham action outing Safe.

Landing on Netflix last Friday, Heart of Stone follows Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone, an intelligence operative and the only woman who stands between her powerful global peacekeeping organization and the loss of its most valuable — and dangerous — asset.

Directed by Tom Harper (Peaky Blinders, The Aeronauts) from a screenplay by Greg Rucka (The Old Guard) and Allison Schroeder (Hidden Figures) and with a story by Rucka, Heart of Stone stars a supporting cast that includes the likes of Jamie Dornan (The Fall, Fifty Shades of Grey), Alia Bhatt (Highway), Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda, Death on the Nile), Matthias Schweighöfer (Army of the Dead), Jing Lusi (Crazy Rich Asians), Paul Ready (The Terror), Jon Kortajarena (A Single Man), Matteo Cicconi, and Angela Esposito alongside Gadot.

Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot hopes that Heart of Stone will launch a James Bond or Mission: Impossible-esque franchise with her at its center, but will the popularity of the first movie hold? And will it be enough to spawn as many sequels as those two iconic franchises have?

RELATED: Exclusive: Gal Gadot Talks Heart of Stone and Her Love of Action

Heart of Stone Is Now ‘Rotten’

Netflix

While Heart of Stone may be proving popular with streamers, the same sadly cannot be said for critics, with the action outing achieving just 30% on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. “Gal Gadot remains an entertaining action star, but she’s no match for Heart of Stone’s thinly written characters, generic plot, and rote set pieces,” the critics consensus reads.

MovieWeb’s own David Reddish meanwhile found that there is some fun to be had in Heart of Stone, but that this tale of espionage and AI only just manages to be entertaining enough to overlook its obvious flaws.

“Instead, Harper makes a generic action picture, though a very fun one. Heart of Stone is the kind of movie that audiences watch, have a great time, and forget five minutes after the credits roll. Like the drive-in exploitation pictures of yore, viewers may turn to each other as they toss their empty popcorn buckets and say with a grin, “That was good.” Schlock cinema doesn’t aspire to be high art; it just wants to be some cheap fun. On that level, Heart of Stone succeeds, and this time, that’s enough.”

“Heart Of Stone is a perfectly watchable and often daft bit of fun, but its mission to supersede Ethan Hunt might prove to be impossible,” says Laura Venning of Empire Magazine, while Variety’s Owen Gleiberman adds, “What makes “Heart of Stone” such an enervating experience isn’t that it’s incompetent but that nothing in it matters.”

Heart of Stone is available to stream now on Netflix.

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