Heart of Stone, starring Gal Gadot, who puts on the Wonder Woman shirt as DC’s most successful casting move in recent times and does justice to this legendary character, can be described as an “espionage action thriller”.
Tom Harper, who made a name for himself with Wild Rose, is the director of the production written by Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder, the likes of which we have watched dozens, maybe hundreds of times. Especially considering that Allison Schroeder was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for her movie Hidden Figures, one would think that she would encounter a “slightly” more nuanced flow.
The film begins with the operation of the British intelligence agency MI6 to capture an arms dealer, and then moves on to the struggle of a secret organization established to maintain global peace, with its superior technical equipment and, moreover, Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot), one of the most important intelligence and field agents, with the danger directed against the organization.
This secret organization, which calls itself Charter/Society, has under its control a system called Heart/Kupa, which is equipped with advanced artificial intelligence technology and can record almost every digital data in the world and analyze good or bad possibilities. And the Society uses this superior technology to stop the evil on earth and prevent people from dying in possible attacks.
Oh, did someone say “Minority Report”? Well, there may have been examples in the past, but this is much more advanced AI technology. Ultimately, the evil men plan a series of attacks and ambushes on the Society, both to take revenge and to seize this superior power because they are slaves to their ambition. Our agent Stone tries to prevent these treacherous plans by flying both on land and in the air…
It is a little difficult to say that Heart of Stone, Gal Gadot’s second action movie on Netflix, is as successful as its predecessor, Red Notice. The film, which establishes an intense espionage and action umbrella, unfortunately tries to progress without the main character infrastructure, supporting and “stuffed” side character stories that would make a story a movie. Despite the originality of pitting two female hackers, one of whom is also a highly trained field agent, against each other (let’s salute the screenwriter Schroeder at this point), the rest of the script is full of cliché characters and scenes where we memorize what we will encounter.
While elements such as Stone’s past, the motivation of his presence in Charter, and his real personality remain quite superficial, it is possible to say the same for the young hacker opposite him, Kaye. Unfortunately, citing a few family reasons and waging war against a globally active organization are not balanced. On the other hand, although Gal Gadot gives a good performance in the action scenes, she is far from convincing in the rare emotional scenes.
While Matthias Schweighöfer, whom we watch as the other side character in the movie, in the role of Jack of Hearts, gets away in this turmoil to some extent, unfortunately Jamie Dornan, who shook things up with the character of Christian Gray for a while, cannot go further than being a cliché villain.
The only thing that saves the film is the intense action scenes that take place across a geography ranging from the Alps to London, from Lisbon to Senegal and even Iceland. If you are wondering how many different vehicles and tools Gal Gadot can drive, you will find the answer you are looking for in these action scenes that dominate more than half of the movie. Oh, I wish we’d watched a little less of a Mission Impossible copy.
Heart of Stone, Netflix’s new trump card for this summer, awaits its audience in the “New Movies” category, as a production that unfortunately cannot go beyond imitating its predecessors and does not make good use of the only chance it has in terms of originality. Despite all its negatives, it is currently at the top of this week’s Top 10 most watched…
All about Heart of Stone movie.
Directed by: Tom Harper Visits: 38
Starring: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt, Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighöfer, Paul Ready, Jing Lusi, Archie Madekwe, Enzo Cilenti, Jon Kortajarena, Glenn Close, Mark Ivanir
Screenplay by: Greg Rucka, Allison Schroeder
Production Design by: Charles Wood
Cinematography by: George Steel
Film Editing by: Mark Eckersley
Costume Design by: Julian Day
Set Decoration by: John Bush, Tonja Schurmann
Art Direction by: David Allday, Thomas Brown, Jamie Burrows
Music by: Steven Price
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some language.
Distributed by: Netflix
Release Date: August 11, 2023
