Category:

Review

Duration: 13:57

13 views

2

"Heart of Stone" (2023) directed by Tom Harper is a throwaway Netflix film in my opinion. It also demonstrates how Gal Gadot has an extremely limited acting range and has very little strengths as a lead.

Rachel Stone (Gadot) works for the Charter, a global peacekeeping agency. The Charter possesses the world's most important device / weapon, called the Heart. The Heart is an A.I. which is able to essentially predict the future. One of her teammates, Parker (Jamie Dornan), betrays her and plots to take the Heart so that he can have control of the world's major powers.

Heart of Stone was actually better than I thought it would be for the record, but I still didn't like it. I never wanted to watch this movie but my treasured father did so I sucked it up and saw it with him. He absolutely loved it, and I have no quarrel with him or anyone else enjoying it, but I just found it to be derivative and completely and utterly void of charm / fun. That's not to say it's completely terrible though, it uses a drone to film some awesome cinematic shots and the location choices were pretty great, as well as some occasional good action here and there.

I would argue Heart of Stone is very derivative of James Bond to the point it had me scratching my head on whether it was intentional homage or just accidental copying. The film straight up begins with a pre-credit unexplained action sequence at one of the Bond film's most famous locations, Piz Gloria, and then once that is over, we hop into the equivalent of a gun barrel opening scene for our lead character and then we go into a miniature music video for the film's theme song. Bond-isms aside, the plot felt both convoluted and overly simplistic at the same time, and I can assure you I didn't care or feel any impact from the stakes here. I don't know the actor's name but I wanted to mention that I felt the one and only genuinely good performance came from Rachel's boss, the black woman who was charged with protecting the world.

Heart of Stone is a below average action film due to it's somber phoned-in lead. Rachel is not suave or charming like James Bond or Ethan Hunt, she is a forgettable nobody that could be replaced with anyone else.

#rainynights #movies #heartofstone