Acting is a relatively recent addition to Gal Gadot’s résumé. She’s been crowned Miss Israel, she’s served in the Israel Defense Forces, she’s studied law – acting is just the latest item on the list. On the big screen, she’s been a member of both Dom Toretto’s crew and the Justice League.
On the horizon, Gadot will be reprising her role as Wonder Woman in next year’s highly anticipated ‘80s-set sequel, joining the gargantuan A-list cast of Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot movie franchise in Death on the Nile, and starring as Hedy Lamarr in an as-yet-untitled biopic TV series. So, here are Gal Gadot’s 10 Best Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes.
Fast & Furious (29%)
It’s crazy to think that there was ever a Fast & Furious movie that didn’t star Vin Diesel, since he’s now the heart and soul of the franchise, but after the first one, his appearances in the franchise were spotty for a while. The fourth movie, which was more of a reinvention than a straightforward sequel – as evidenced by the title Fast & Furious – got things back on track.
Tokyo Drift isn’t a terrible movie, but it did show the limitations of a long-running franchise that only tells stories about street racing. Fast & Furious turned the franchise into a straight action movie series, and it’s been better off ever since.
Criminal (30%)
Right before roles in beloved superhero movies would change their careers forever, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds supported a fading Kevin Costner’s last-ditch attempt to break back into the A-list with a Liam Neeson-esque “geriaction” starring vehicle.
Criminal is about a convict who is implanted with the memories of a dead CIA agent in order to complete their mission, although it never lives up to the Face/Off-ish promise of that premise. Gary Oldman and Tommy Lee Jones have minor roles in the movie, marking the first time that the two actors have worked with Costner since collaborating with Oliver Stone on the much better-received paranoid political thriller JFK.
Justice League (40%)
The original director of the DCEU’s big team-up, Zack Snyder (the guy whose vision shepherded the DCEU into existence, and who planted seeds for Justice League years earlier), had to drop out in the middle of shooting, due to a family tragedy.
Warner Bros. replaced him with Joss Whedon and threw out a lot of the denser, character-focused work – particularly involving the woefully underserved characters of Cyborg and the Flash – in favor of shallowly ripping off what works about MCU movies, with diminishing returns. The end result has far too little plot development and far too much dialogue about brunch.
Knight & Day (52%)
James Mangold’s Knight & Day spent a long time in development hell before it finally saw the light of day as a starring vehicle for Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. There are plenty of exciting action scenes in Knight & Day, and Cruise and Diaz make for a well-matched pair, but the movie is sadly let down by its painfully predictable and formulaic plot.
It’s a generic spy thriller with not-so-generic set pieces. Gal Gadot only has a small role as a henchwoman that Tom Cruise offers to sell the MacGuffin to, and despite her limited material, she still gives a memorable turn.
Triple 9 (53%)
The star-studded cast of Triple 9 is more impressive than the movie itself. It has a deep bench consisting of traditional big-name movie stars (Kate Winslet, Woody Harrelson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Casey Affleck, MCU mainstay Anthony Mackie etc.), actors who are better known for their beloved TV roles (Aaron Paul a.k.a. Jesse Pinkman, Norman Reedus a.k.a. Daryl Dixon, Michael K. Williams a.k.a. Omar Little etc.), and of course, Gal Gadot.
The film itself is an action thriller with a muddled premise involving a crime lord forcing his team of bank robbers to pull off another bank heist after being disappointed by the ensuing chaos that followed the last one.
Date Night (66%)
Steve Carell and Tina Fey star in this zany comedy as a married couple who lead boring lives marked by the same old routine. One date night, they shake things up by taking a table reserved for a couple who haven’t shown up.
However, the couple they’re posing as turn out to be in bed with the mob, and before long, they’re in trouble with gangsters, hitmen, and crooked cops. While there’s plenty of action and slapstick comedy, this is really just the story of a pair of suburban parents who are stuck in a rut and need an eventful night living on the wild side to get their groove back.
Fast & Furious 6 (70%)
The sixth movie in the Fast & Furious franchise was the one where Gal Gadot’s character Gisele tragically dies in the action-packed finale. It’s the one set on the longest airport runway in the world, as Dom Toretto and his crew chase down a cargo plane that’s attempting to take off with the bad guys on board.
Gisele sacrificed herself to save Han, who was unfortunately not too far away from biting the dust in the franchise’s chronology himself. So, the #JusticeForHan campaign should really come with a #JusticeForGisele clause attached to it – she saved Han right before he was killed.
Fast Five (77%)
The first truly great – and arguably still the best – installment in the Fast & Furious franchise, Fast Five took the crew to the streets of Rio de Janeiro for a heist with an elaborate plan designed to give audiences the most insane, adrenaline-fueled, action-packed set pieces conceivable.
There’s a sequence where the characters run across the rooves of Brazilian favelas, a sequence where armed mercenaries in tactical gear attack Dwayne Johnson’s motorcade (with the Rock making his F&F debut in this one), a sequence where two sports cars drag a vault across the freeway – it’s gleefully absurd, and endlessly entertaining.
Ralph Breaks the Internet (88%)
This belated sequel to Wreck-It Ralph did more than just bring its central characters into a whole new world – the World Wide Web – it also developed their relationship organically, following on from the new equilibrium where we left them in the first one. This wasn’t just a shameless cash-in; this was a story that felt like it needed to be told.
The message of the movie is that it’s okay for your friends to have other friends, because that’s just healthy. In Ralph Breaks the Internet, Gal Gadot’s character Shank is the other friend, as she introduces Vanellope to the gnarly, violent world of the online game Slaughter Race.
Wonder Woman (93%)
This was the movie that, albeit briefly, restored fans’ hope in the DC Extended Universe. After a dreary origin story for Superman that was bereft of both fun and faithfulness to the source material, a team-up with Batman that elicited more memes than praise, and a rushed supervillain ensemble that threw David Ayer’s vision out the window in favor of trailer-like editing, it seemed like the DCEU was as good as dead.
And then Patty Jenkins came along with Wonder Woman, an empowering, earnest, charming superhero blockbuster that uses sincerity as opposed to dark themes and cynicism to avoid criticisms of cheesiness.