Heart of Stone
Netflix delivers another highly efficient action-thriller with a star turn from Gal Gadot as a kick-ass secret agent.
Ms Impossible: Gal Gadot
The surprise is that Stone has a heart. Rachel Stone is a spy endowed with a preternatural skill to kill, who can handle herself in a wide range of extreme situations. She is played by Gal Gadot, one of the highest paid actresses on the planet, who joins a long line of world-class beauties of late to have limned an ass-kicking secret agent. Heart of Stone slips neatly into the category of big-budget Netflix action-thriller, along with the requisite big stars, even bigger ideas, glamorous locations, covert organisations, double agents, ruthless villains and innumerable drone shots.
It all starts predictably enough. Rachel is a computer ace (in movies, the tech support is always supplied by uncharacteristically beautiful women) who is working for MI6 (albeit with an uncertain accent). We’re in the Italian Alps and there’s a sting in operation involving a cartel of arms dealers. But there’s a hitch because there’s a bloke with a peroxide hairdo, which invariably spells trouble in these types of films…
The plot is largely irrelevant: there are the mandatory twists and turns, spectacular explosions, a crazy car chase (in Lisbon) and the usual suite of surprises. But the real surprise is that after sloughing off its formulaic first act, Heart of Stone actually grows more interesting. There’s no reason to care a jot for anybody in the opening twenty minutes, because we are not invested in any of the characters. But when Rachel visits the home of a victim to pay her respects to his cat (Barry), the film slows down to take a breath. And when Rachel exits Edgware Road tube station to go home, her flat turns out to be genuinely red-brick Victorian (such details are seldom adhered to in international blockbusters).
However, it’s the MacGuffin that really intrigues, being a quantum computer known as ‘The Heart’, which can access any intelligent device on earth and manipulate it accordingly. It is the sibling of the rogue AI in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, with which Heart of Stone shares innumerable ingredients. But that’s no bad thing. As the world is held to ransom by its digital dependency, the unforeseen comes to the rescue, much like the bacteria in War of the Worlds. In this case it’s the lowly landline (future governments take note).
There is the clichéd dialogue (“it doesn’t feel right…”, “it’s complicated”, “the end justifies the means”), and too many predictable last-minute saves. But there’s a bunch of good stuff, too. Sophie Okonedo makes a wonderfully salty, down-to-earth intelligence director, there’s some eye-catching location work and a number of neat visual flourishes. And who can resist the scene when a random bus passenger has his mobile hacked into? Netflix action-thrillers should really be judged on their own metric, by which standard Heart of Stone fares rather well. It certainly feels sequel-worthy.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighöfer, Paul Ready, Jing Lusi, B.D. Wong, Alia Bhatt, Archie Madekwe, Enzo Cilenti, Jon Kortajarena, Glenn Close, Mark Ivanir, Diana Yekinni.
Dir Tom Harper, Pro David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Gal Gadot, Jaron Varsano, Bonnie Curtis and Julie Lynn, Ex Pro Tom Harper, Screenplay Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder, Ph George Steel, Pro Des Charles Wood, Ed Mark Eckersley, Music Steven Price, Costumes Julian Day, Sound Saoirse Christopherson and Andy Kennedy, Dialect coach Elizabeth Himelstein.
Skydance/Pilot Wave/Mockingbird Pictures-Netflix.
122 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 11 August 2023. Cert. 12A.
