Heart of Stone
Netflix | Release Date: August 11, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
44
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
7
Mixed:
21
Negative:
8
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
ConsequenceLiz Shannon MillerAug 10, 2023
Heart of Stone is the rare streaming movie that does not open with an in medias res action sequence, followed by a “[Some Amount of Time] Earlier” card and a flashback to simpler days. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperAug 10, 2023
Directed with action-movie aplomb by Tom Harper (“The Aeronauts,” “Peaky Blinders”) and featuring great-looking visuals from settings including London; Lisbon, Portugal; South Tyrol, Italy; Morocco, and Reykjavik, Iceland, “Heart of Stone” is clearly intended to jump-start an action franchise for Gadot, and it’s off to a promising start. Read full review
75
ColliderTania HussainAug 10, 2023
With verve and style, Heart of Stone does a great job of creating a new character in the espionage thriller genre. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonAug 10, 2023
The movie is fun, which could be all we need right now. Let’s do it again next summer. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicKaely MonahanAug 10, 2023
Some may dismiss Heart of Stone as another rote action film. But to really look at it, appreciate the character of Rachel Stone and truly compare her with action men, she holds her own. Read full review
63
ObserverLaura BabiakAug 10, 2023
Heart of Stone is happy to take its cues from predecessors in the spy genre—which isn’t a problem in and of itself. The formula does still work, but the sum of the movie’s parts doesn’t quite add up the same. Read full review
63
USA TodayBrian TruittAug 10, 2023
Various spycraft tropes litter director Tom Harper’s globetrotting narrative, though Gadot’s charm offensive and her character’s righteous fervor help counter the film’s wilder plot swings. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeAug 14, 2023
The screenplay is a rudimentary thing – scaffolding to support the set pieces – that starts to creak whenever it attempts any depth of character. But the action is terrific, with a screaming, tyre-shredding extended car chase around Lisbon’s tight, cobbled alleys a breathless and exhilarating highlight. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalJohn AndersonAug 10, 2023
Ms. Gadot is magnetic, will probably make a delicious Evil Queen in “Snow White,” and is spinning her wheels in the snow of the Alps, the dust of the African desert and the lava sands of Iceland in an effort to place the cornerstone, so to speak, in the construction of yet another kinetic movie series. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyAug 10, 2023
It gets the job done and is sure to pull solid numbers. It doesn’t hurt that Gadot has appealing chemistry with co-star Jamie Dornan. Read full review
60
Total FilmMatt LookerAug 10, 2023
Working from a script by Greg Rucka (The Old Guard) and Allison Schroeder (Christopher Robin), director Tom Harper (The Aeronauts, Wild Rose) displays impressive action chops, injecting Heart of Stone with plenty of explosive fights and spectacular stunts. On those grounds, it’s rollicking genre fare. Story-wise, however, it plays all its best hands early on. Read full review
60
NMENick LevineAug 10, 2023
Thankfully, if you can suspend your disbelief, Heart Of Stone is plenty of fun and far slicker than a lot of recent Netflix content. It almost goes without saying that the ending leaves room for a potential franchise. And after two hours of near-constant japes and scrapes, you’d need a heart of stone – or at least a high entertainment threshold – not to think “Oh go on then, why the hell not?” Read full review
60
The GuardianBenjamin LeeAug 10, 2023
Gal Gadot leads the streamer’s latest ambitious franchise-starter that delivers just about enough dumb summer fun to have us curious for more. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesNoel MurrayAug 18, 2023
The slam-bang stuff in this picture is too tediously routine. The movie is much better when it gets philosophical, pondering a world where everybody’s surveiling everybody else but nobody can agree on how to use that information to keep us all safe. Read full review
50
We Got This CoveredScott CampbellAug 11, 2023
Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s very much a costly, star-studded, explosive attempt to build a brand new IP from the ground up that the company can call its own, but it’s impossible to shake the feeling that we’ve walked down this exact road many times before. Make of it what you will, but the end product is exactly what you think it’s going to be, for better or worse. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 11, 2023
Heart of Stone is quite glossy and beautiful to look at, and though there’s not much that’s dynamic about her, Gadot at least has a charming insouciance. Even if you’ll be hard-pressed to remember any of it three hours later, the runtime of Heart of Stone flies by quickly enough. Read full review
50
IGNTara Bennett Aug 10, 2023
Heart of Stone is so busy trying to start a franchise that it forgets to be a movie good enough to merit a sequel in the first place. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleAug 10, 2023
In this film, whenever Harper gets to do nothing but direct, as in the action scenes, Heart of Stone works. It’s in the convolutions of its flat script that the movie falls apart. Read full review
50
Screen RantRachel LaBonteAug 10, 2023
It's an entertaining movie that also serves as a great showcase for Gadot's action chops, but it might not linger long in the memories of viewers. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubCourtney HowardAug 10, 2023
What’s there demonstrates a modicum of decent world-building, from which filmmakers can hopefully spin-off better, more capably crafted capers. Read full review
42
IndieWireKate ErblandAug 10, 2023
The film, of course, sets up for a sequel or two, another franchise for the algorithm to chew up, more artificial entertainment to consume, another screen to watch. Next time, we humbly ask, can we get a little more human? Read full review
40
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyAug 17, 2023
Gadot remains Gadot, and there’s no hope that she might transform into something new because Heart of Stone can’t imagine its existence without her star quality. Read full review
40
CNNBrian LowryAug 11, 2023
A self-conscious effort to build a spy franchise around Gal Gadot, Heart of Stone plays like a poor woman’s “Mission: Impossible,” mostly thwarting even its star’s Wonder-ful charisma. Despite solid action moments scattered over its two hours, this Netflix movie plays like an inoffensive but lifeless addition to the “You might like” feature that, alas, you probably won’t. Read full review
40
The Daily BeastNick SchagerAug 10, 2023
Heart of Stone plays like reheated leftovers, its flavor familiar but diluted. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyAug 10, 2023
Some of the action sequences are OK, the cast decent – but this convoluted action-adventure's poor attention to detail is its undoing. Read full review
40
The New York TimesCalum MarshAug 10, 2023
And yet, even if the computer shenanigans look goofy, they’re more interesting than the movie’s run-of-the-mill spy thrills. Read full review
40
EmpireLaura VenningAug 10, 2023
On the more inoffensive end of Netflix’s original output, 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. Read full review
40
TheWrapFran HoepfnerAug 10, 2023
Though it ticks all the boxes, there is a lack of surprise and originality. Read full review
38
The Associated PressJake CoyleAug 11, 2023
All the pieces here are fine but nothing is distinct from dozens of films before it. You would swear that the movie’s star AI wrote it — and even gave itself first billing, too. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineClayton DillardAug 10, 2023
The cinematography looks striking enough throughout the various set pieces, but little happens in them to elevate Heart of Stone past its hackneyed foundation. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsAug 10, 2023
To become a true screen action hero outside the “Wonder Woman” realm, Gadot needs better material than this, and only when she gets to square off with Bhatt’s increasingly conflicted superhacker does Heart of Stone suggest a human pulse. Read full review
36
Paste MagazineJacob OllerAug 14, 2023
Heart of Stone is murky, drab and always going the wrong speed. It’s either motionless, allowing exposition scene after exposition scene to lay out the boring details of what might happen if the wrong folks get control of The Heart, or erratic, dicing its badly remixed action sequences like it was trying to avoid a copyright strike from the movies it steals from. Read full review
33
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezAug 14, 2023
Heart Of Stone purports to have characters made of sturdy, gritty, golden, unbreakable stuff, but that’s a tagline, not a movie or story; it’s really just flimsy work easily tossed off and broken as it tumbles into the ever-filling bin of barely-one-use Netflix movies. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comMarya E. GatesAug 11, 2023
It’s an overly calibrated hodge-podge of better movies with absolutely no original thought of its own, populated by stock characters, and brought to life with uninspired filmmaking. Read full review
20
VarietyOwen GleibermanAug 10, 2023
What makes Heart of Stone such an enervating experience isn’t that it’s incompetent but that nothing in it matters. It’s all bombast and noise, all hollow logistics, all virtual “Minority Report” screens and clattering fury signifying nothing. In other words: Time to start planning the sequel. Read full review
20
SlashfilmJosh SpiegelAug 10, 2023
This movie isn't even worth glancing at when you scroll through your Netflix profile. Read full review
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