Ahhh Netflix, when will you learn? Just because you pump in millions of dollars and cast a few attractive faces, it doesn’t necessarily make a film good. Sooner or later, audiences are going to need more substance than style to be hooked.
Case in point: “Heart of Stone”, a “Mission: Impossible” wannabe try-hard that has garnered a unanimous stamp of disapproval from critics across the board.
The movie follows Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot), a tech-support personnel with the M16, who is with her team at the Italian Alps on a mission to extract an arms dealer when she runs into Keya Bhawan (Alia Bhatt), a hacker who botches their efforts.
As it turns out, Stone actually works for a secret peacekeeping organisation called The Charter. After a (debatably) surprising twist wherein she discovers there might be a rogue agent in her MI6 team, viewers – as obligated by all spy thrillers – are jet-setted to different parts of the world.
Now Stone has to stop the aforementioned double agent who’s working with Bhawan to steal the “Heart”, the core of the AI system used by The Charter to guide all their operations.
It’s essentially a super computer that can hack into every network in the world all at once – and, in the wrong hands, could bring about catastrophic repercussions or whatever.
It’s no secret that Gadot is good at action scenes thanks to her background in the Israel defence forces. However, acting-wise, she doesn’t quite have the chops to play the lead, no thanks to her bland expressions and monotonous delivery.
She particularly falters during the more emotionally driven sequences, from her supposedly flirtatious exchanges with fellow MI6 agent Parker (Jamie Dornan) to her interaction with Bhatt’s Bhawan during a conversation about the latter’s difficult upbringing.
Indeed, Bhawan is given more layers than Stone, who is supposed to be the main character. The hacker wrestles with a moral dilemma over her decisions, which immediately makes her more interesting than the butt-kicking and morally superior girl boss Stone.
Meanwhile, an underused Sophie Okonedo plays Nomad, Stone’s team leader. After seeing how phenomenal the actress was in “Ratched” (also produced by Netflix), it’s a shame she is relegated here to the role of a stern and jaded mentor who doesn’t say much.
As for the action, the opening scene where Stone glides along the Alps with a parachute is acceptable. Thereafter, it’s standard car chases and fist fights that not only convey a lack of originality or urgency, but could even be considered borderline boring.
There are also plenty of instances when you can clearly tell the actors are standing or talking in front of a green screen, which makes you wonder where the over-US$60 million (RM2.8 billion!) budget went.
Script-wise, there is much promise in the concept of the “Heart” and the dangers of relying too much on AI to determine whether to save someone or let them die for the greater good.
Alas, it’s never explored deeply; instead, this potential is shelved to make way for generic gunfights and exploding buildings.
If there’s one thing that’s remarkable about this film, it’s how it manages to feel draggy and rushed at the same time. Some scenes will have you looking at the clock or checking how much runtime is left… and yet, you’ll wish they had taken the time to flesh out the two-dimensional characters and given them some sort of narrative arc or depth.
Overall, it looks like “Heart of Stone” is fated to fall into Netflix’s flashy-but-forgettable action films like “The Gray Man” or “Red Notice” , both of which, at least, had more favourable reviews (and not just from FMT Lifestyle).
But hey, they all have eye candy front and centre, so there’s that.
‘Heart of Stone’ is now streaming on Netflix.