Heart of Stone is another one of Netflix’s attempts at making a big-budget action movie that you watch at home instead of the movie theater. Even though you can watch it in a theater for a week, more on that later, we have a big spy action movie starring Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone, an MI-6 computer technician on a team with other spies, much like that we see in Mission Impossible movies. The twist here is that Rachel is actually an undercover superspy for an organization called the Charter. This clandestine group uses its immeasurable resources to protect the world from evil without state biases. She’s the 9 of Hearts. There are a lot of twists and turns in this movie, but not enough to get you lost. The movie just throws you in and expects you to accept how this world works. We have Rachel transversing the globe using action and computer skills to try and save the world from a bad guy trying to steal…wait for it…an AI computer that can do anything.
Yep, you read that right. The same thing Ethan Hunt is dealing with the same thing The Fast Family dealt with in Furious 7 and many, many others. The overwhelming fear of AGI is at its height, not seen since Terminator 2. Gal is very likable in this. This feels like the same Gal we got in the first Wonder Woman film. A ton of charisma here while looking amazing even when hurt. My two favorite performers in this film are Jing Lusi as Theresa Yang and Paul Ready as Max Bailey. They are part of Rachel’s MI-6 team, that really stands out. Ready is just fun as his lovable ops character with humor and heart. Lusi just looks cool in this movie. Her fight scenes feel like fights, and she has a swagger that I enjoyed. Not everyone knows how to rock and walk in a fur coat. She does. The film does miss something when it moves its focus from them. Alia Bhatt plays Keya Dhawan, the second most important character. A young genius hacker who, of course, wants to change the world by affecting those in power. While the character isn’t THE bad guy, they are aligned with them, but the major choice in the film is dependent on them.
Sophie Okonedo plays Rachel’s mentor and boss – the King of Hearts and does so well as she feels like M from James Bond with a touch of Amanda Waller. Matthias Schweighöfer plays Jack, aka Jack of Hearts, the Ops/info man of the Charter’s Hearts suite. He’s there to be funny, but I don’t feel he got enough to be as lovable as Bailey was earlier in the film. Jamie Dornan plays Parker, the very much James Bond-looking handsome British spy. He puts on all the charisma you’d expect from this type of character, that usually would be the star of the film. They work well with putting him and Rachel in places where you expect them to be romantic interests. Luckily they go the other way and end up at odds for the film. That’s as far as I go, but I do think Dornan works great in this as this type of character. While his character did annoy me, it fit with what was going and his charisma helped with Parker for me. Overall I really like Heart of Stone, and I was lucky to see this film on the big screen, but I do feel it will be fine and entertaining to watch on your TV or computer screen.
Score: B
