VOD film review: Heart of Stone
Review Overview
Cast
7Style
7Script
3David Farnor | On 12, Aug 2023
Director: Tom Harper
Cast: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Jing Lusi, Alia Bhatt, Paul Ready, Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighöfer
Certificate: 12
Do you follow your heart or follow a computer calculation? That’s the dilemma that faces Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot) in Netflix’s latest attempt to launch an action franchise. Rachel, you see, must have a heart of stone – remember her surname is “Stone” – in her work as a super-secret spy, not least because she spies for a super-super-secret organisation known as the Charter, which uses an AI gizmo known as the Heart to calculate the best course of action in any given scenario. It can predict the most reliable escape route, the most likely threat, the most efficient target to accomplish a specific goal. And it can probably predict the fact that this script is trying a little too hard to be clever.
We first meet Rachel as a low-level agent on a mission that goes awry – revealing the fact that she’s actually highly capable and hooked up to the high-tech AI that makes her even more effective. We also learn that other people have discovered the Heart isn’t mere spy myth, but a real, powerful means to shape the course of the world – and they want to get that power for themselves. And so Rachel and her team – MI6 veteran Parker (Jamie Dornan), slick operative Yang (Jing Lusi) and Fleetwood Mac-loving Bailey (Paul Ready) – find themselves up against the ambitious Keya Dhawan (Alia Bhatt), who has personal reasons for seeking out the Heart.
What ensues is a string of set pieces that pit the heroes and villains against each other in varying combinations, all the while trying to muddy the waters as we’re told that nothing is as clear-cut as “right” and “wrong”. Except when your super-super-secret spy network is run by Sophie Okonedo, and the AI is operated by the scene-stealing Matthias Schweighöfer (the breakout star of Army of the Dead, it’s pretty clear where our loyalties will lie, no matter how hard the script attempts to be convoluted.
In fact, the film is best when it’s in simple action mode, with director Tom Harper (Wild Rose, The Aeronauts) bringing visual pizzazz to each escalating sequence. These also allow Gal Gadot to be effective and charismatic without getting bogged down in the screenplay’s twists and turns. The result isn’t exactly Mission: Impossible, but it is an intriguing original premise with stylish opening credits and a cast who are game for the ride, particularly Jamie Dornan in sarcastic, imposing mode. It’s just ironic that the less the film feels like it’s written by algorithm, the more entertaining it gets. If the data leads to a sequel, here’s hoping it follows more human instincts.