Heart of Stone really has a Heart of Stone

★ out of ★★★★

Heart of Stone (2023)

Runtime: 122 minutes

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some language.

Since, perhaps, movies like Red Notice that have debuted on Netflix with dull thuds, I've been deathly afraid of every blockbuster manufactured by the gargantuan streaming service. It all just adheres to an overly-familiar formula, where the talented cast are given nothing to work with, while showcasing luxurious places around the world. These blockbusters are distancing, forgettable, and make me approach future projects with a certain amount of dread.

Some of this can be applied to Tom Harper's "Heart of Stone", although it looks less grand and more ambitious. However, the problematic execution results in a film that succumbs to unreasonable tonal shifts, plot twists, a lack of emotional connection, and terrible film-making choices that make it difficult to approach.

It doesn't feel as formulaic as the others that preceded it (Red Notice, Ghosted), but the result is something worse than that. Gal Gadot, the star of the film, plays an intelligence operative agent Rachel Stone, who's with an MI6 team to extract a potential asset and arms dealer, Mulvaney (Enzo Cilenti). However, it goes awry and Mulvaney dies just when the team thought they had completed the mission. 

Back in London, the team, consisting of Stone, Parker (Jamie Dornan), Bailey (Paul Ready) and Yang (Jing Lusi), are reprimanded for failing to complete the task. Stone goes to the Charter headquarters, where Nomad (Sophie Okonedo) lambasts her for her actions, which nearly blows her cover. They discover a hacker, identified by Stone as Keya Dhawan (Alia Bhatt, in her debut American film role). Consequently, the MI6 team are sent to track down Keya who is hiding in Lisbon, but all goes wrong again, with a mole from the team killing all members except Stone, and planning to access The Heart to gain control to all systems on Earth.

What I've summarised up here sounds very structurally similar to the Mission: Impossible films, except that it attempts to replicate it and fails miserably. The most important thing about a plot twist is that, besides it being unexpected, there should also be enough information: a foundation, build-up, and piecing of information before the twist that makes us understand its logic. With "Heart of Stone", we start forcedly with an action-loaded sequence, and there's no build-up of narrative. Even worse, characters are all reduced to a simple trait or two and a generic motive, that each turn in the plot or death are all impactless.

The horribly handled execution of sequences are also extremely detrimental to the entire piece. Working with generic set pieces with no innovation or imagination, director Tom Harper still finds a way to place his actors and capture incomprehensible shots that aren't fitting to the scene, or modulate action scenes in such a shakily quick way (it isn't even badly edited), that most of the scenes will leave you in a state of confusion, and by the time "Heart of Stone" moves on to the next chapter, you'd still be fumbling over what it was all about. The overuse of scores doesn't help, either.

Many people like to say that they have trouble remembering a film the next day or week. I, for one, had trouble remembering what happened in the beginning of the film by the time the credits rolled.

Still, Gadot may prove to be a serviceable action star, working with an almost non-existent script to deliver lines that suitably fit her character. Yet, again, there's no need for her to express another emotion except... seriousness. There are also some scenes where the dialogue or event nicely follows up to earlier beliefs or mentioned interests.

Nevertheless, "Heart of Stone" is, worst of all, a lifeless bore, thanks to the clunky pacing. Its jarring tonal shift changes the direction of the film a tad too frequently, resulting in different movies playing per hour (for example, it felt like a third movie was playing at the 90-minute mark). It also surprisingly avoids the opportunity to explore and comment on Stone’s philosophy and moral principles against objective calculations from The Heart. Listen, if you want something terrifically fun which will reduce you to tears, just scroll a little lower on Netflix's main page and head over to Nimona.