We already know that most Netflix original movies stink. There’s almost no arguing that.
I might make a recent exception for last month’s “They Cloned Tyrone,” which takes risks and doesn’t conform to mainstream tastes. Other than that one, we have the Jackie Chan/ John Cena vehicle “Hidden Strike,” which has been topping the Netflix charts for a few weeks now.
However, it’s finally been dethroned by another clunker, Gal Gadot’s spy thriller “Heart of Stone.” Gadot’s mostly panned spy thriller raked in 33.1 Million views and 69.6 hours viewed. I tried watching it last night, but turned it off after 30 minutes.
I’m again struck by Quentin Tarantino’s fairly accurate comments from few a month ago.
If you remember, Tarantino offered an opinion on the streaming phenomenon, calling out Netflix for making expensive blockbusters that made no real cultural impact after being unceremoniously released:
“I mean, and I’m not picking on anybody, but apparently for Netflix, Ryan Reynolds has made $50 million on this movie and $50 million on that movie and $50 million on the next movie for them […] I don’t know what any of those movies are. I’ve never seen them. Have you? I haven’t ever talked to Ryan Reynolds’ agent, but his agent is like, ‘Well, it cost $50 million.’ Well, good for him that he’s making so much money. But those movies don’t exist in the zeitgeist. It’s almost like they don’t even exist.”
Yes, all of these big films might have been watched by millions of people, but their cultural impact has been fairly stagnant. Barely anybody talks about them.
“Heart of Stone” aligns well with many other popular Netflix titles, preferably the kind of big, dumb action extravaganzas that, as if powered by an algorithm, recycle story ideas from previous big, dumb action movies.