Heart of Stone – 35%

Reviewer ranking: 3,368/5,151

Earlier this year Netflix released the J-Lo assassin film The Mother (2023). This time the streamer brings Gal Gadot into the spy game. It’s her second leading foray with Netflix after 2021’s Red Notice.

Heart of Stone follows Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot), a member of MI6 and the 9 of Hearts for an even more covert unit called The Charter. The super-secret unit has the world’s greatest spy tool, “the heart,” an infinitely powerful piece of technology that gives its users control over literally anything touching the internet. Even some things that don’t seem like they do. The heart is also able to calculate probabilities, which at times pushes The Charter to make ethically dubious decisions under the veil of the greater good.

Heart of Stone – (L to R) Jing Lusi as Yang, Paul Ready as Bailey, Jamie Dornan as Parker and Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone in Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.

What follows is a revenge-story filled about people trying to get the heart and bring down The Charter. All of the usual espionage trappings are trotted out: double crosses, car chases in narrow European urban areas, fights on planes, and moments when everyone might die. Director Tom Harper’s action scenes flow well and are often fun.

The film shines the brightest when dealing with Gadot with her MI6 crew, who have a strong chemistry that infuses charisma into predictable proceedings. When Heart of Stone fixes solely on Gadot (who pulls off an icy calm persona exquisitely), it becomes something more serious and reserved, abandoning much of its energy, and all the viewer is left with is a paint-by-the numbers Mission: Impossible rip-off. Heart of Stone is a decent action film, but lacks a personality of its own.