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‘Heart of Stone’ Review: Mission Improbable

Gal Gadot plays an international superspy who teams up with an all-powerful computer in this ludicrous and derivative Netflix espionage thriller.

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By Calum Marsh

In the early going, “Heart of Stone” seems like a pretty routine action thriller about spies. Gal Gadot stars as Rachel Stone, a rookie hacker for an MI6 unit; when we meet her in the movie’s opening sequence, she’s in the middle of a covert mission to ensnare an arms dealer in the Italian Alps, ferrying her elite squad of operatives past high-tech security systems, mainly by tapping away at a computer, looking very serious and saying stuff like “writing a new access code … the system’s offline!”

As tradecraft goes, this is not exactly John le Carré . But soon the bland espionage intrigue gains a surprising wrinkle: It transpires that Stone is a double agent working for another, even more secret intelligence agency, known as the Charter, which controls an all-powerful computer called the Heart. A kind of omniscient algorithm described at one point as “the closest thing mankind has to perfect intelligence,” the Heart has access to “trillions of data points” that effectively allow it to predict the future. Wired into the Charter headquarters via earpiece, Stone receives prophetic guidance from the Heart’s tech guru (Matthias Schweighöfer) to be transformed into an all-seeing superhero.

The Heart’s on-the-fly analyses are rendered as big floating digital maps clogged with barely legible graphs and statistics, and Schweighöfer, scrutinizing the data, is forced to spend much of his screen time standing there waving his hands around in a vain effort to look like he’s actually controlling something. (Steven Spielberg made this same sort of thing look cool in “Minority Report,” but the “Heart of Stone” director Tom Harper does not have quite the same touch.) And yet, even if the computer shenanigans look goofy, they’re more interesting than the movie’s run-of-the-mill spy thrills. Bewilderingly, Rachel’s access to the Heart is severed early in the film’s second act — dragging us right back to the mundane cloak-and-dagger stuff.

Computerless, Rachel gets her hands dirty through car chases, fist fights and more to regain control of the Heart’s predictive powers. Here, the movie’s influence shifts from “Minority Report” to a franchise also starring Tom Cruise: “Mission: Impossible,” from which “Heart of Stone” steals multiple set pieces in their entirety. A motorcycle chase strikingly similar to the exquisite one from “Rogue Nation” looks flat and pedestrian by comparison, with dull staging and a corny gag; its knockoff “Fallout” HALO jump, however, is shameless plagiarism, made all the more insulting by appearing so ludicrously fake. Cruise jumped out of an actual airplane . Gadot free falls through bad C.G.I.

Cruise’s adversary in the latest “Mission: Impossible” is an omnipotent algorithm with the power to destroy humanity — a metaphor for the data-driven forces of the streaming landscape eroding the sanctity of the cinema. What does it say that in “Heart of Stone,” from Netflix, the heroes work for the computer, and the powerful algorithm is represented as a force for good? If Cruise is trying to save the movies, as he’s often credited with doing, he’s trying to save us from films like this.

Heart of Stone Rated PG-13 for intense action, strong language and some graphic violence. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

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‘heart of stone’ review: gal gadot and jamie dornan tangle in familiar but diverting netflix spy thriller.

Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighöfer and Alia Bhatt also star in this race to save the crucial asset of a secret global peacekeeping agency.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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In Heart of Stone , that all-powerful cyber tool is called “The Heart,” capable of hacking any network in the world, manipulating technology, sabotaging any system, even downing planes. It’s operated from a central hub by a jocular techie code-named Jack of Hearts ( Matthias Schweighöfer ), who has one of those movie jobs where he stands around swiping the air and conjuring detailed hologram representations of all kinds of video and data, including exactingly calibrated statistical chances of success or failure on any given mission. He’s like Steve Kornacki with a cutting-edge equipment upgrade.

The Heart is the key asset of the Charter, an underground peacekeeping organization made up of highly trained former intel operatives. Frustrated with their various governments’ by-the-book methods, they have banded together, using sophisticated technology to neutralize global threats.

If you’re wondering who came up with the unlikely nonsense of a network of anonymous do-gooders, thwarting world conflicts and saving maximum lives while taking no credit, that would be screenwriters Greg Rucka (who penned one of the better Netflix action thrillers, The Old Guard ) and Allison Schroeder (lead writer on the rock-solid crowd-pleaser Hidden Figures ).

The extended pre-titles sequence follows an MI6 unit comprised of field agents Parker (Dornan) and Yang (Jing Lusi), transport and comms guy Bailey (Paul Ready) and newbie tech officer Rachel Stone (Gadot) as they attempt to take down Europe’s most wanted arms dealer, Mulvaney (Enzo Cilenti), who’s been lured out of hiding by a high-stakes elite gambling event at an Italian Alps casino.

The tense mission plays out in the luxury resort, on the ski slopes and in a cable car; it doesn’t go exactly as planned, in large part because Rachel demonstrates — at least to the audience — an unexpected skill set. The high rollers are betting on the body count of a real-time Navy SEALs operation, meaning that a criminal element has cracked U.S. military encryption codes. A mysterious woman, later revealed to be 22-year-old Indian tech wunderkind Keya (Alia Bhatt), makes her presence known, along with her access to MI6 comms channels.

Not much more can be discussed about the plot without spoiling the two big reveals that happen relatively early on. But director Tom Harper also goes pedal to the metal with the fight and flight action as the resourceful Charter agent steps out from undercover and endeavors to ensure the security of The Heart, then undertakes a series of near-death challenges attempting to retrieve it once it falls into the hands of a villain, who has recruited Keya as a vital accomplice. The latter turns out to be not nearly as ruthless as she seems when her personal agenda comes to light and the cold-heartedness of her partner in crime gives her serious moral qualms.

Never mind that the script barely tries to find credible motivation for the malefactor so determined to take control of The Heart — described by Keya as “the greatest skeleton key in the world” — and so merciless in immediately putting it to use to spread chaos and death, not to mention toppling one “King” after another. A hurried backstory in war-torn Chechnya doesn’t really amount to much, though it does provide a grievance against the Charter.

What will matter more to the Netflix audience that evidently eats up this stuff is that the movie remains in constant motion as the action zips from Italy to London to Portugal to the Senegalese desert and Iceland, propelled along by Steven Price’s suspenseful score, as well as lots of big stunt work and explosions.

As a woman cut from Ethan Hunt cloth, Gadot is in fine form, kicking ass with elegant athleticism but at the same time remaining within the boundaries of regular human vulnerability. Rachel’s bond with her MI6 comrades provides some emotional texture, as does her eventual big-sister vibe with Keya, though it’s refreshing that this is a female-driven action flick in which the protagonist is not required to have a love interest.

Dornan shows darker shades beneath his character’s easygoing veneer, the role marking a complete about-face from the devoted husband and father he played in Belfast . The natural charisma of Gadot and Dornan carries the film, with Okonedo lending no-BS authority to the stern but caring Nomad and solid support from Bhatt, Schweighöfer, Ready and Lusi.

Shot by George Steel, who has worked extensively with Harper, including on Wild Rose , The Aeronauts and Peaky Blinders , the movie looks a touch flat and grainy on a big screen but will no doubt play just fine at home.

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• Netflix’s <i>Heart of Stone</i> Is a <i>Mission: Impossible</i> Wannabe That Mostly Misses

Netflix’s Heart of Stone Is a Mission: Impossible Wannabe That Mostly Misses

T he throwaway diversion is nothing new in the world of movies, though the era of content may very well be its golden age. Never has there been so much stuff , of varying quality, for you to put in front of your bored eyeballs. As throwaway diversions go, Netflix’s Heart of Stone —starring Gal Gadot as a secret operative who at one point flies through the air in a puffy flying-squirrel suit—is neither great nor terrible. It occupies that vast middle zone of small-screen movies that easily fill the void of a few empty hours, if you happen to have any to spare, though it’s nothing you’d carve out time in your schedule to watch.

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Gadot’s Rachel Stone is the rookie on a team of MI6 agents, eagerly learning the ropes from her peers. There’s ace driver Bailey (Paul Ready), a sweet, bearded bachelor who’s eager to show off pictures of his adored marmalade cat before anyone even asks; Yang (Jing Lusi), a no-nonsense, take-charge type who doesn’t mind having Rachel under her wing; and well-dressed swagger-dude Parker, played by Jamie Dornan, whose handsomely chiseled face always throws me for a minute when I first see it: Is that one of the Christmas Prince/Princess Switch guys? (Eventually I place him, and although his performance is perfectly serviceable here, it’s good to remember that he was wonderful as the father in Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast , and he may very possibly be a brilliant comedic actor, if his turn as sexy evil henchman Edgar Pagét in Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is any indication.)

Cautious newbie Rachel, who’s excellent at following instructions, is exceedingly fond of her colleagues, and she shares their disappointment when they botch the first mission shown in the movie: they’re supposed to nab a baddie at a luxe Italian ski resort—the first of the film’s several handsome locations, which also include Lisbon and Reykjavik—but someone else gets to him first. They return to London not for a new assignment, but to do paperwork. But it’s all OK with Rachel; she’s really more of a behind-the-scenes person anyway.

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Or is she? The plot of Heart of Stone involves a group of top-level former intelligence agents who comprise the Charter, an organization that makes use, for good not evil, of a vast data-tracking thingie known as the Heart, which has the power to make planes drop out of the sky, highjack nuclear weapons, and so forth. The smarties of the Charter include ringleader Nomad (Sophie Okonedo) and a group of operatives with nicknames drawn from the suits of playing cards (in tiny snippets of screentime, we meet BD Wong’s King of Clubs and Glenn Close’s King of Diamonds). A mysterious tech-head named Keya (Alia Bhatt) seeks control of the Heart. Somehow, Rachel Stone fits into all of this, and she gets to wear some fine spy outfits, including a marshmallowy puffer jacket that magically makes her look slender and, much later, a jersey dress like an orange flame.

In addition, there are lots of explosions and action sequences in Heart of Stone, as well as a pinwheeling car chase, though none of that should come as a surprise. (The director is Tom Harper, who made the lovely 2018 film Wild Rose, starring Jessie Buckley. The script is by Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder.) The movie’s plot is negligible, seemingly stitched from vague bits and bobs of various Mission: Impossible movies—unsurprising because like those pictures, it’s a product of Skydance Media, and quite clearly intended to be the beginning of a franchise. But Heart of Stone is quite glossy and beautiful to look at, and though there’s not much that’s dynamic about her, Gadot at least has a charming insouciance. Even if you’ll be hard-pressed to remember any of it three hours later, the runtime of Heart of Stone flies by quickly enough. But not nearly as fast as Gadot’s character in her flying-squirrel onesie.

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Heart of Stone Review

A familiar, cookie-cutter action flick.

Heart of Stone premieres August 11 on Netflix

Someone find Gal Gadot a worthy franchise to front, because Heart of Stone is not it. Netflix’s latest original action thriller plunks Gadot into the world-weary role of Rachel Stone, a gorgeous and super competent operative for Charter, an international underground peacekeeping organization who spy on the spies to maintain some murky mission statement about global balance. With the help of The Heart – referred to as “the world’s most powerful AI” – she is assigned to travel the world blowing up a lot of stuff and “stopping the bad guys” whomever they may be. Stone has the ennui of James Bond and the passport of Carmen Sandiego but is neutralized by a script stuffed with cardboard characters.

Heart of Stone opens with a lot of promise in an action-packed, super-sized prologue that introduces us to Stone on her first field mission with an established MI6 infiltration team that includes Jamie Dornan’s Parker. They’re assigned to an exclusive, mountain top Italian ski resort where a notorious arms dealer is about to make a very dangerous deal. Stone is undercover as the “green” tech noob they think they have to coddle. Turns out she’s actually a Charter operative tagging along to make sure the arms don’t get into the wrong hands.

What is Gal Gadot’s best action film?

What ensues are the most visually inventive set pieces of the movie, shot as the sun sets on the snow-packed Italian mountains, which Stone has to descend in the dark. At the very least, the prologue is visually arresting and establishes what The Heart looks like and can do, which is compile data on everything and everyone so it can predict outcomes with precision.

In Stone’s case, The Heart also functions as the tethered, virtual mission buddy that tells her where to go and what to do, as the machine’s handler, Jack (Matthias Schweighöfer), crunches numbers in a basement HQ far away. His role is to snark as he makes fast hand gestures and swoopy-swoops over digital images; a poor man’s Lydia Tár conducting expensive VR. The quantum computer is so powerful that everyone who knows about it likes to ominously whisper: “If you own The Heart, you own the world.” Yet what’s utterly baffling is that halfway through, all of The Heart’s pretty bells and whistles are shut down, ripping away the one unique thing Heart of Stone had going for it. Unless they ran out of VFX money, it’s an utterly confusing choice.

Heart of Stone Gallery

Nevertheless, a brilliant young hacker named Keya Dhawan (Alia Bhatt), who has a personal vendetta against The Heart, is determined to gain control of it via her own posse of oppositional thinkers and thugs. As Stone is all work and no play – perhaps some would even say she’s exploited by Charter – they share a sad-girl vibe of reciprocal understanding throughout the film. Director Tom Harper’s smartest call is to lean into Gadot’s inherent ability to create empathy between characters, which adds a lot of spark to Rachel and Keya’s scenes. But any real exploration of who they are as people, rather than their ideological leanings, is run over by the film’s frenetic pace.

Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder’s script allows no space for any substantive moments of backstory or nuance for anyone in the cast. This is Heart of Stone’s Achilles heel: Stone and company are reduced to a collection of spy character tropes, saddled with consistently cringe-worthy dialogue, or worse, used as cannon fodder to elicit some kind of unearned emotional moment for the protagonist. But maybe that’s for the best, because otherwise the audience would have too much time to question the logic of how the people onscreen can survive a desert hike for hours with no water. Or how so many bullets never manage to hit Stone, even in open areas. At least when The Heart is operational, there’s a quasi-legitimate excuse for Stone’s inordinate good fortune. When it’s offline, the whole film devolves into improbable fantasy.

Heart of Stone is slick-looking but composed entirely of empty calorie set pieces that crib heavily from other contemporary action films like The Gray Man , Extraction , or Red Notice . It ticks so many familiar boxes that by the end, you can anticipate every mustache-twirling reveal, “surprise” death, or eye-rolling countdown clock. It’s hard to get excited for future Stone adventures when there’s no reason to care about the characters left standing at the end of this one.

Heart of Stone doesn’t have much going for it beyond the presence of Gal Gadot in the central role. The screenplay might as well be written by an algorithm: a soulless amalgamation of the elements determined by current metrics to ensure an international hit. From the intercontinental cast stuck playing paper-thin characters to the loud and shiny visuals and the litany of exotic locales seemingly selected solely for the tax credits they offered, we’ve been here before. Gadot is game but the nonstop action provides her almost no consequential downtime to build a realistic character. And even then, outside of the opening prologue, the action devolves into a loud mush of increasingly implausible and cliched scenarios. Heart of Stone is so busy trying to start a franchise that it forgets to be a movie good enough to merit a sequel in the first place.

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Heart of Stone review – uneven but enjoyable Bond-alike adventure

Elite former agents Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan and Alia Bhatt are parachuted into dazzling locations around the world in this high-action Netflix romp

W ho watches the watchers? Who offers covert support to the unwitting secret services when they get themselves into scrapes? According to Tom Harper’s uneven but enjoyable high-tech espionage action romp, there’s a mysterious organisation known as the Charter, controlled by an all-seeing supercomputer and made up of elite former agents, which swoops in to tidy up where governments, security agencies and rogue entities have made a bit of a mess of things.

And if that all sounds a bit MI does AI, that’s presumably the point. There’s very little that’s original in this Bond-alike adventure, which has a fine time of it parachuting ace hacker Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot), MI5 veteran Parker (Jamie Dornan) and computer prodigy Keya Dhawan (Alia Bhatt) into various stunning locations around the world (Reykjavik takes the most punishment). The screenplay is a rudimentary thing – scaffolding to support the set pieces – that starts to creak whenever it attempts any depth of character. But the action is terrific, with a screaming, tyre-shredding extended car chase around Lisbon’s tight, cobbled alleys a breathless and exhilarating highlight.

In select cinemas and on Netflix

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‘Heart of Stone’ Review: Gal Gadot Plays a Rogue Agent in a Joyless Thriller That’s All Rote Logistics

It's a convoluted saving-the-world thriller full of MacGuffins we can't pretend to care about.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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We all know what a MacGuffin is (and in case you don’t, here’s what it is): an object or event that the plot of a thriller hinges on, and which everyone onscreen keeps talking about, yet it has no intrinsic interest apart from how it serves the structure of the movie. The term was mythologized by Hitchcock, and as shorthand for the way a certain kind of movie works it has never gone out of style. But what do you call a MacGuffin that’s so boring the audience can’t pretend to care about it? Let’s call it a MacMuffin.

Except that as we learn, that’s all a ruse. Rachel is a counteragent, a spy among spies. She’s actually a member of the Charter, an international group of agents who have bonded together — with allegiance to no country — to make the world a safer place. We see her interact with other members of the Charter, yet the outfit is really the film’s first MacMuffin. We never have any idea of what they’re up to, how they operate, or where they fit into the global nexus. They’re just a utilitarian thriller abstraction.

There are many reasons why movies are now too long, but “Heart of Stone,” which clocks in at a laborious two hours, demonstrates an especially wearying form of bloat. With Gadot’s Rachel as a superspy out to save the world, the movie is a degraded descendant of the Bond thrillers. Yet it doesn’t have a plot so much as an endless digressive chain of events that are churned out like sausage links. This isn’t storytelling, it’s wheel-spinning. The movie could just as well have been four hours long: Here’s one more overblown set piece! One more hollow twist for your excitement! The director, Tom Harper (who made the very good “Wild Rose”), keeps the action pumping — the hand-to-hand fights and machine-gun battles, a cardboard 007 prelude in which Rachel manipulates her way through a casino, then parachutes down the side of a seemingly endless mountain. And there’s a parade of global locations that amounts to a weather collage: the desert of Senegal, Iceland, European cities that get turned into ornate backdrops of destruction.

Rachel, for all her imperviousness, emerges from that opening sequence seriously shaken-if-not-stirred by the presence of Keya, a mysterious hacker who cast a meaningful glance her way in the casino. Who is Keya? She’s the film’s third MacMuffin: a character we’re supposed to pretend to be invested in, but all we can think is that the actor, Alia Bhatt, comes off as too courtly and innocent to compete with the lethal chicanery around her.

Gal Gadot is game, but there’s a slightly downbeat earnestness about her that doesn’t mesh with the reflexive quippiness of the dialogue. Dornan proves he’s got what it takes to be debonair and conniving at the same time, yet the closer we get to Parker’s plan the smaller it seems. That’s the way a MacMuffin works: Pay it much scrutiny, and it collapses on contact. What makes “Heart of Stone” such an enervating experience isn’t that it’s incompetent but that nothing in it matters. It’s all bombast and noise, all hollow logistics, all virtual “Minority Report” screens and clattering fury signifying nothing. In other words: Time to start planning the sequel.

Reviewed at Digital Arts, Aug. 8, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 122 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of a Skydance, Mockingbird Pictures, Pilot Waves Motion Pictures production. Producers: David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Jaron Varsano, Gal Gadot, Bonnie Curtis, Julie Lynn. Executive producers: Patricia Whitcher, Tom Harper, Greg Rucka.
• Crew: Director: Tom Harper. Screenplay: Greg Rucka, Allison Schroeder. Camera: George Steel. Editor: Mark Eckersley. Music: Steven Price.
• With: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt, Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighöfer, Paul Ready, Jing Lusi, Archie Madekwe, Enzo Cilenti, Jon Kortajarena.

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'Heart of Stone' Review: Gal Gadot Fights to Escape Netflix Oblivion

While this thriller could get lost amongst other action offerings on the streamer, it has a leading performance that helps it stand out.

This review was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn't exist. Following movies like Red Notice , Extraction 2 , and The Mother raking in millions of hours on the global streaming service since their respective debuts, Netflix is looking to reel in a new audience with its latest action-adventure, Heart of Stone , led by Gal Gadot and a star-studded cast, including Jamie Dornan and Alia Bhatt . Premiering this Friday, the Tom Harper -directed feature is certainly entertaining and engages the audience with knockout action sequences and strong performances. However, there are elements of Heart of Stone that feel rather familiar and periodically fall back on genre conventions.

From the executive producers of The Old Guard and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning , Heart of Stone sets itself up as a strong action franchise for Gadot with some major Ethan Hunt vibes. Within the first 20 minutes establishing the film’s tone and direction, through enough mystery and action to pique your interest ahead of its very sharp and stylish opening credits sequence, we meet our hero in Gadot’s Rachel Stone. An unassuming computer tech agent, she is in an elite MI6 unit headed up by lead agent Parker (Dornan). However, her team doesn’t realize she is actually an operative for The Charter, a covert peacekeeping organization that keeps secrets from other agencies through its state-of-the-art AI technology used to counteract global threats. Though she has been trained to be a consummate professional and has maintained her cover in MI6 for over a year, things go awry when a routine mission gets derailed by a mysterious hacker named Keya (Bhatt). Rachel’s life and identity are soon catapulted into chaos as she races to protect her teams and The Charter’s most valuable yet dangerous asset, “The Heart” from an enemy team. As she strives to beat the odds and understand the formidable weapon’s power held by her organization, Rachel relies on her humanity to lead the way and save the world from mass catastrophes.

Once audiences understand what “The Heart” is and the power it wields, Heart of Stone might look like a carbon copy of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning , but it manages to carve out its own identity and charm thanks to Gadot. The Wonder Woman star manages to bring a touch of heart and grace to the type of cliché espionage thrillers traditionally dominated by men. In stunts that would impress Tom Cruise or even James Bond’s Daniel Craig , Gadot manages to make solid use of a motorcycle and a flying suit. There is even a one-on-one, hand-to-hand fight sequence on a cylinder beam that would have Jason Bourne taking notes. The pacing is brisk with these action scenes choreographed extraordinarily well, giving us some of Gadot’s most beautiful combat sequences since Wonder Woman .

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'Heart of Stone' Transcends Trope

When Hollywood usually creates female action heroes, they are often dropped in a plot any man can perform — albeit with tighter clothing and a focus on her sex appeal. Instead of doing that, Heart of Stone revitalizes the age-old trope with a humanistic approach and makes way for a potential female-led franchise that creates a character who is thoughtful with her compassion serving as a driving force for her actions. Not to mention, the film balances its action very well with humor without it ever feeling forced thanks to a naturalness that develops between characters and the situations they each find themselves in.

When it comes to the cast, Heart of Stone manages a strong one that leads the way and closes any gaps not fulfilled in the writing. Gadot is incredibly fun to watch and as she manages to tear apart every gendered trope the spy genre encounters as her performance is engrossing and earnest. She has a wonderfully charming talent for making every experience personable and heartfelt through remarkable alertness. In conveying Rachel’s intuitive responses and rollercoaster of emotions with facial nuances and expressions, Gadot’s magnetism manages to elevate this film to a level unseen in other similar spy films. Getting to see her do movies like this is not only comforting, but something you can see Gadot genuinely has fun with and that makes the movie-watching experience all the more enjoyable. Thanks to the writing from Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder giving her a lot to work with in terms of a brainy, emotional character in an ambitious high-octane world, her expressiveness does more than serve the movie: it becomes its most organic part.

With Gadot exerting such star power in Heart of Stone , her performance is matched most successfully by Dornan as Parker, the MI6 team’s leader. While Parker might seem like he doesn’t appreciate Rachel’s unpreparedness as the team’s tech support, she manages to earn his respect very quickly. This creates a charming chemistry and tension between the two that leaves us curious about their dynamic. That said, Dornan also manages to keep some mystery to his character, which keeps us thoroughly engaged as to his aspirations and motives. Parker has an idealistic way of how the world should be, but not in the way audiences might originally expect, which creates some very dynamic and energetic sequences.

The Supporting Cast Fit Right Into 'Heart of Stone'

That isn't all as Indian film superstar, Bhatt, makes her English-language debut in Heart of Stone as the mysterious 22-year-old hacker who’s out to steal “The Heart” and disrupts the plans of MI6 and The Charter. Bringing humor to the film and an ardent conscience, Bhatt manages to work very well with what she is given for Keya. While some of the moments with Bhatt could have been elevated with stronger dialogue, she manages to make the most of it and plays captivatingly to the character’s greenness in a cutthroat world. Through this innocence, we see Bhatt quite emotive with striking expressions and an actress who can hold her own in some very spirited scenes with Gadot and Dornan.

Also joining Gadot in Heart of Stone is Matthias Schweighöfer as The Charter’s tech specialist and “Jack of Hearts,” who works closely with the AI at the center of operations. He is also, in many ways, Rachel’s personal handler, helping her every step of the way. Schweighöfer gives a likable performance with energy and humor sans clichés seen with characters in Mission: Impossible or James Bond. Also part of The Charter is Nomad. Played by Sophie Okonedo , she delivers a fierce and strong portrayal of a badass in charge, filled with light one moment and subtle darkness the next. The contrast she brings to the role is appreciated and adds much-needed intrigue to her character, especially as it opens the door to understanding Nomad’s motivations more for a potential sequel. With Rachel’s team stretching beyond just her MI6 and Charter family, the cast is rounded out by Jing Lisu , Paul Ready , BD Wong, and a special appearance by Glenn Close , who manages to capture our attention in some very specific scenes.

Spy genre fans who prefer movies with strong storytelling that balances smart and quick-paced action sequences will appreciate Harper’s direction with the writing from Rucka and Schroeder. While some moments feel unnecessary and the dialogue could have been stronger for some of its characters, the film still works and is set to an even pace that functions most suitably and delivers on its promise of an action film. Though the graphics could be better in a few scenes and at times feels like a production truly made for TV , Heart of Stone still gets it done and hides its budget constraints very well.

'Heart of Stone' Is the Latest Film to Tackle AI

As our world becomes more immersed in social technologies and artificial intelligence works to enable how we rethink information integration, the film also brings up a valid argument about the dangers that stem from such an authoritative tool and the nefarious forces threatening our security. Not to mention, Heart of Stone creates a gripping commentary in its two hours about humankind and their pursuit of absolute power as an ingredient to survival. Hollywood has long deconstructed AI in multiple action movies and, most recently, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning , though Heart of Stone repackages that very threat into an application that helps humanity to avert a world crisis. However, with “The Heart” touted as an incredible force that changes everything once you have it, the film and its characters’ motivations serve as a cautionary tale of capitalism’s commodification of resources.

Heart of Stone is by no means a perfect movie, but it is a fun one that manages to break past some permeating gender stereotypes associated with this genre of film. This is not a feminist movie in any sense, but it finds its female characters empowered every step of the way, calling the shots and ensuring they are listened to. Gadot is not only the best actor for this role, but she also gives Rachel and the film’s premise some incredible charm not seen in so many of Netflix’s biggest budget projects . While Rachel Stone has plenty of ways to go, the film manages to deliver some pulse-pounding sequences and surprising twists and turns you wouldn’t imagine. Not to mention, a radiant, cold-hearted villain who plays the ruthless role immaculately and will have you wondering what their next move is.

With verve and style, Heart of Stone does a great job of creating a new character in the espionage thriller genre. Paced well despite some run-ins with common genre platitudes plus familiar action beats, the film still manages to thrill with its knockout sequences, humor, and performances. With the group of highly regarded actors in Gadot, Dornan, and Bhatt, the film delivers solid entertainment value through some very gratifying, high-powered fights and a storyline that works. Heart of Stone might seem on the surface like just another Netflix action movie that could fall into oblivion on the streaming platform, but it has a ferocious kick thanks to its lead. With relentless momentum through well-calibrated thrills and compassion, the film works as a standalone or a franchise starter. If it's the latter, we will definitely want to see more.

The Big Picture

• Heart of Stone brings a refreshing twist to the spy genre, breaking gender stereotypes and empowering its female characters to call the shots.
• Gal Gadot delivers a charming and earnest performance, showcasing her talent for action and making the movie-watching experience enjoyable.
• The film raises thought-provoking questions about the dangers of AI and capitalism's commodification of resources, while still delivering thrilling action sequences and surprising twists.

Heart of Stone is available to stream on Netflix starting August 11.

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Movie Review: Gal Gadot turns superspy in ‘Heart of Stone’

This image released by Netflix shows Gal Gadot in a scene from “Heart of Stone.” (Robert Viglasky/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Sophie Okonedo, left, and Matthias Schweighöfer in a scene from “Heart of Stone.” (Robert Viglasky/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Alia Bhatt in a scene from “Heart of Stone.” (Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Sophie Okonedo, left, and Gal Gadot in a scene from “Heart of Stone.” (Robert Viglasky/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Alia Bhatt in a scene from “Heart of Stone.” (Robert Viglasky/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Jamie Dornan in a scene from “Heart of Stone.” (Robert Viglasky/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Matthias Schweighöfer in a scene from “Heart of Stone.” (Robert Viglasky/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Jing Lusi and Jamie Dornan, background center, in a scene from “Heart of Stone.” (Robert Viglasky/Netflix via AP)

This image released by Netflix shows Gal Gadot in a scene from “Heart of Stone.” (Netflix via AP)

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It’s turning out to be quite a summer for superspies and supercomputers.

A month after the action feast of “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part I,” in which Tom Cruise faced off with an AI supervillain called “the Entity,” comes a very “MI”-like international espionage thriller with an equally fancy and powerful machine.

“Heart of Stone” stars Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone, an agent for an elite and clandestine intelligence agency called the Charter. Like “Mission: Impossible,” “Heart of Stone” hits glamorous global destinations (the Italian Alps, Lisbon, Senegal, Iceland) and features lengthy actions sequence including a wingsuit skydive.

Whereas “Dead Reckoning” pushed old-school filmmaking to extremes for a gripping theatrical experience, “Heart of Stone” revels in its digital wizardry, feels vaguely algorithm-y in its conception and was made for Netflix. Both films, interestingly, are products of the same production company, Skydance.

“Mission: Impossible” was born out of the Cold War, but “Heart of Stone” conjures a peacekeeping spy unit outside of nationhood in the hopes of kickstarting a new franchise uncluttered by governments — a globetrotting spy movie without all those pesky geopolitics; a borderless intelligence agency for a borderless streaming era.

That may sound too harsh. After all, there have been countless lackluster espionage thrillers with little connection to the real world. (“Dead Reckoning,” for all its thrills, has about as much to do with today’s international politics as its star has to do with lengthy interviews with journalists .) And “Heart of Stone,” directed by Tom Harper ( “Wild Rose,” “ The Aeronauts” ), does have a few nifty moves of its own.

The film’s opening sequence begins in a very Bond-like Alpine hotel where Gadot’s Stone is part of an MI6 mission posing as an inexperienced tech, not a field agent. This allows for plenty of “She can do that?” looks when the operation falls apart and Stone begins flashing Cruise-level skills while rushing off with a glowing parachute down the darkened slopes in slinky, snowy chase.

To the credit of Harper, cinematographer George Steel and production designer Charles Wood, the action is generally fluid in “Heart of Stone.” The film’s handsomest design comes in Charter’s secret weapon: the Heart, the so-named quantum computer with supreme hacking abilities that can process chance-of-success scenarios in real time. Its operator (Matthias Schweighöfer), like a new-age John King, contorts a room full of pixels with the wave of his hand, while guiding Charter agents from afar.

Also in the mix is Jamie Dornan’s Parker, the leader of the MI6 unit that Stone is initially masquerading in — though his affiliations are also murky. The trouble is kicked off by a hacker of mysterious intentions played by Alia Bhatt, a Bollywood star making her Hollywood debut. Glenn Close pops in as the head of the CIA.

I’m not sure any of them get a chance to do all that much, though Bhatt is charmingly mischievous in her scenes. Not for the first time, the actor I most wish was center stage is Sophie Okonedo, who, as a Charter leader, is the most soulful presence in a not particularly soulful film. Gadot makes for a slinky if unspectacular spy.

The plot, from screenwriters Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder, revolves around the threat of the Heart falling into the wrong hands. This means that “Heart” is spoken of so much that you have expect the Wilson sisters to turn up eventually.

But there is nothing in the impressively generic “Heart of Stone,” right down that title, that is even a little bit unexpected. All the pieces here are fine but nothing is distinct from dozens of films before it. You would swear that the movie’s star AI wrote it — and even gave itself first billing, too.

“Heart of Stone,” a Netflix release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for sequences of violence and action, and some language. Running time: 123 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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Heart of stone, common sense media reviewers.

Lots of violence, some language in female-led spy thriller.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

An international spy agency works toward peace on

Women in this film are portrayed as leaders, tech

The actors in this movie's main cast hail from Isr

Deadly fights, gunfights, stabbings, poisonings, p

Men and women flirt with each other. A woman watch

"S--t," "hell," "damn," "bitch," "bollocks," "piss

Car brands and attractive international locations.

Adults drink alcohol. Spies use drugs to provoke d

Parents need to know that Heart of Stone is an excellent spy thriller starring Gal Gadot. Expect a significant amount of violence and many tense action sequences. Women, including women of color, are featured in physically and technically demanding leadership roles as they try to save the world from powerful…

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Heart of Stone is an excellent spy thriller starring Gal Gadot . Expect a significant amount of violence and many tense action sequences. Women, including women of color, are featured in physically and technically demanding leadership roles as they try to save the world from powerful villains. There's also language ("s--t," "hell," "damn," "bitch," etc.), and minor drinking and flirtation. Fights can be deadly; other (often bloody) violence includes gunfights, stabbings, poisonings, physical feats (including jumping out of airplanes, paragliding through forests, and driving at breakneck speed), falls, and suffocations. Characters are shot dead or otherwise killed or injured at close range, and villains show no remorse for murdering targets or killing innocent bystanders. There's mention of terrorist threats, dangerous hackers, nuclear bombs, warlords, and war-related cover-ups. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (12)
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Based on 12 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Is it any good.

The film's international cast is a big part of its appeal and neatly fits with the storyline's idea of a non-nation-based spy outfit. If planned sequels also repeat the globe-trotting action of this original, even better. It's always fun to glimpse real cities subjected to false action -- here, for example, buildings explode in Reykjavik and cars spin out around Lisbon's famous trams. Gadot, as always, commands the screen. She's as believable as any of her male counterparts in this film's impressive action sequences, which send the actress sailing over cliffs, hurtling down hills, jumping out of planes, speeding through cities, kicking bad guys' butts, and generally saving the day in a myriad of ways. Do you have to completely suspend belief to enjoy this film? Of course, but isn't that half the fun?

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The action in Heart of Stone travels the globe. How do you think scenes like car chases and exploded buildings in actual cities are filmed? Where could you go for more information?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : August 11, 2023
• Cast : Gal Gadot , Jamie Dornan , Alia Bhatt
• Director : Tom Harper
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors, Indian/South Asian actors, Female writers
• Studio : Netflix
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : STEM , Sports and Martial Arts , Great Girl Role Models
• Character Strengths : Courage
• Run time : 125 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sequences of violence and action, and some language
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : October 13, 2023

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Screen Rant

Heart of stone review: gal gadot shows off action chops in generic spy thriller.

Netflix's ​​​​​​​Heart of Stone attempts to put its own spin on a familiar action flick and break through that mold, but its results are mixed.

• Netflix's Heart of Stone attempts to break free from its mediocre track record of action movies, but falls short due to a generic plot and lack of standout action sequences.
• Gal Gadot leads the film with her quiet strength and genuine heart, showcasing her excellent action star qualities, while Alia Bhatt delivers an intriguing performance as a multifaceted character.
• Though Heart of Stone has a unique layer to its spy story at the beginning, it loses its complexity and becomes a more simplistic film that may entertain viewers but fail to leave a lasting impression.

Editor's note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn't exist.

It's probably safe to say that Netflix has a so-so track record when it comes to its action movies. For every hit, such as the Chris Hemsworth-led Extraction movies, there are more mixed offerings like The Gray Man and Red Notice , which rack up big viewership numbers but fail to leave an impact critically. The streamer's latest offering, director Tom Harper's Heart of Stone , attempts to put its own spin on a familiar action flick and break through that mold, but its results are mixed. The movie deserves some credit for putting its faith in female strength and introducing fascinating character dynamics, but its plot is too generic to stand out amid other recent action movies.

A covert mission atop a snowy mountain in Italy introduces Agent Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot), a tech whiz often kept in the van away from the action. She's part of an elite MI6 team led by Parker (a solid Jamie Dornan), and her job is strictly hacking; at least, that's what her fellow agents think. In reality, Stone is a member of the Charter, a shadowy, near-legendary organization that operates outside governmental boundaries to keep peace around the world. Stone's skills exceed that of her MI6 colleagues, partially because the Charter holds an incredible weapon: The Heart, an omniscient computer program that can access pretty much everything everywhere all at once.

When Stone is compromised and the Heart is put in danger, she finds herself up against Keya (Alia Bhatt), a skilled hacker with past criminal ties. Exactly what Keya wants with the Heart is a mystery, but Stone is determined to protect the Charter and get justice for some wrongs inflicted on her life. To say more would be to get into spoiler territory, and Heart of Stone does manage to pull a surprise or two out of its screenplay, penned by Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder and based on a story by Rucka. For all of Heart of Stone 's more clever aspects, though, such as the dynamic that arises between Rachel and Keya, it falls prey to some of the more frustrating tropes of the action genre. The Heart itself is the biggest example, as it's only the latest in a long line of ultra-powerful AI-like weapons to arise onscreen.

Coming just a month after the similarly-minded Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One doesn't do Heart of Stone many favors, especially when it comes to its action, which does at times pale in comparison to the more realistic spectacles of the Tom Cruise-led franchise. Heart of Stone thankfully doesn't rely too much on the Heart's capabilities to push the plot forward, but there's still a strong sense of been there, done that. The Heart is just another vaguely defined, far too powerful tech MacGuffin, leaving the plot to locate and protect it feeling disappointingly generic. Heart of Stone doesn't hold any major standout action sequences either, though Harper does stage each one well enough to spark interest. In terms of its overall production, Steven Price's score adds an exciting edge to the drama playing out, and director of photography George Steel keeps the camera moving in a dynamic way.

As Rachel, Gadot leads Heart of Stone with the same quiet strength and genuine heart she brought to the Wonder Woman franchise. It's not a role that pushes her to new places, but Gadot has certainly proven she's an excellent action star, and there is the possibility that a Heart of Stone 2 could take the character further (there's no explicit cliffhanger, but the door is open for more Stone). Bhatt gets more layers to play as Keya, whose motivations are grayer than her initial introduction might suggest. She skillfully rides the line between nefarious and earnest, making her Heart of Stone 's most intriguing figure. Sophie Okonedo and Mattias Schweighöfer fill in supporting roles within the Charter, with Okonedo especially making an impression as Stone's formidable boss and mentor Nomad. Though the script at times does more telling instead of showing with them, the clear respect and affection between Nomad and Rachel helps nudge Heart of Stone towards something a bit more substantial.

Heart of Stone starts off with a unique layer to its spy story firmly in place, as Rachel is hiding her true skill set from her MI6 teammates. This gives the character meaty internal conflict that would be interesting to see play out. However, a plot twist erases that conflict almost midway through the movie, sending it into a more simplistic place it never quite gets out of. The interactions Stone has with both Nomad and Keya hint at something more interesting, but with the Heart kept firmly as its primary focus, Heart of Stone never rises to true greatness. It's an entertaining movie that also serves as a great showcase for Gadot's action chops, but it might not linger long in the memories of viewers.

Heart of Stone begins streaming on Netflix Friday, August 11. It is 125 minutes long and rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some language.

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Heart of stone.

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Heart of Stone

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In Theaters

• Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone; Jamie Dornan as Parker; Alia Bhatt as Keya Dhawan; Sophie Okonedo as Nomad; Matthias Schweighöfer as Jack of Hearts; Jing Lusi as Yang; Paul Ready as Bailey; Enzo Cilenti as Mulvaney; Jon Kortajarena as The Blond

Home Release Date

• August 11, 2023

Distributor

Movie review.

Listen to your heart, we’re told.

But what is the heart? A muscle pumping blood through our bodies? The object we attribute our emotions to?

Well, in the case of Rachel Stone, the Heart is a quantum computer capable of hacking into anything, anywhere. It simultaneously monitors every person on the globe through cameras, microphones, computers, etc. And because it’s constantly watching (and learning), it can predict with near-perfect accuracy exactly what someone will do and what will happen after.

Stone’s employer, the Charter, uses the Heart to watch the actions of terrorist organizations, dangerous militant governments and global disasters. Then they use that information to save as many lives as possible.

But when a group of villains learns about the existence of the Charter and the Heart, they decide to steal the Heart for themselves. Because whoever owns the Heart, owns the world.

Rachel is told to listen to the Heart to stop this from happening—no matter the cost. But what the Heart says is a bit different from what her own heart is saying. And even though she knows the bad guys absolutely cannot gain possession of the Heart, she wonders if the ends truly justify the means.

Positive Elements

By and large, the Charter acts for the good of humanity. The Heart is programmed to “maximize lives saved.” And that’s certainly not a bad thing.

That said, Stone realizes that blindly following the Heart’s directives can still hurt a lot of people, even as it saves many others. While difficult choices must be made sometimes, Stone knows they could and should do better. And she negotiates with her employers to create a less lethal, more moral system for the future—one that tries to help all people in spite of the odds, not just the ones the Heart says they can help.

She also learns that the Charter’s strict no-relationships policy for its agents (which includes no family or friends), ironically, takes the heart out of the agency’s own workings. People need to have relationships. They need to have someone they care for, someone they’re fighting for, someone who has their back. And she convinces the Charter to let her create a team of people she cares for who will help her change the world for the good.

A woman is rightly imprisoned for her criminal actions. But she shows genuine remorse after watching several innocent people murdered by her cohorts and is eventually allowed to atone for her mistakes by working for the Charter. Another woman makes a kind gesture to a deceased man’s family.

The Charter, despite some of its early flaws, still manages to save thousands, if not millions, of lives. And we hear about some of the heroic things its members have done.

Spiritual Elements

As he dies, a man says to his enemy, “See you in the next life.”

Sexual Content

A couple kisses in the background of a scene. A young woman sits on a much older man’s lap. Several women wear form-fitting or revealing dresses. A man somewhat lustfully watches a woman swimming in a modest swimsuit. Later, she looks at him in a similar manner as he changes shirts.

Violent Content

Violence is pretty par for the course in spy thrillers, and Heart of Stone is no different. From start to finish, this flick is filled with gunfights, knife fights, fistfights, car chases and crashes, explosions and more. And yeah, people—including many innocent bystanders—often die during these clashes (though we don’t see a lot of blood or gore).

What might be a bit jarring for some viewers in these action sequences is the violence toward female characters. Sure, these gals can hold their own in a fight, but watching one big dude after another toss them around like rag dolls is pretty rough. (One woman is thrown onto a table and then yanked off by her hair .)

A bad guy electronically drops an elevator from many stories up, killing the passengers as well as several folks waiting down in the lobby. Someone dies via cyanide poisoning. A few people are garroted. Someone cuts the power to an underground bunker in an attempt to suffocate the people inside. We see the people pass out from lack of oxygen, but they’re saved in the nick of time.

A woman uses a syringe filled with an unknown drug to give a man a heart attack. A woman is temporarily paralyzed after getting cut with a poison-tipped knife. Stone uses a scalpel to cut out a hacking device that was embedded into her arm.

Someone hacks into the live footage of ongoing military operations and displays the violent videos on several television screens (which we see glimpses of) so that people can bet on the body counts. (And we learn this was done to lure a dangerous arms dealer.)

We learn the Charter once used drone missiles to take out a group of compromised agents to prevent the weapons they carried from falling into the wrong hands. (A survivor from that attack sports several burn scars on his back.)

Keya, one of the bad guys working against Stone and the Charter, reveals that her adoptive father was actually responsible for the deaths of her parents, conducting lethal medical experiments on them and thousands of others.

Crude or Profane Language

There are 14 uses of the s-word. We also hear uses of “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “h—,” “p-ss” and the British expletive “bloody.” God’s and Christ’s names are abused four times each.

Drug and Alcohol Content

People drink alcohol at parties and restaurants throughout the film. Someone tosses a used cigarette on the ground. Stone takes some pain relievers after getting injured.

Other Negative Elements

As can be expected of most spy thrillers, people (even the good guys) lie, steal, bribe, betray, hack into computers and commit other crimes, such as reckless driving. Folks gamble at a casino.

A man says that great men don’t get power because they earn it or deserve it. Rather (he posits) when the moment comes, they take it. Several people are fueled by their desire for revenge.

Listening to your heart can be difficult. Sometimes the heart just wants things that aren’t necessarily good for us. (And sometimes the Heart forces the Charter to make some hard decisions.) But Stone learns that pairing her own heart with the Charter’s Heart actually makes her a better agent.

The risk might be greater—and she could even perish—but she knows she’ll save a lot more lives by doing so.

But speaking of risks, there are a few with watching this Netflix flick.

Language isn’t super frequent, but there are still 14 uses of the s-word to watch out for, along with other profanities.

Violence is the most brutal offender, really. Heart of Stone is packed practically nonstop with a plethora of action sequences. People often die in these scenes. And even when they don’t, some of the fights involving men against women get pretty intense.

In terms of spy thrillers, Heart of Stone is about what you’d expect in terms of its content. But just because it’s what you’d expect doesn’t necessarily mean you should plop the whole family in front of the TV screen to watch . You’ll need to listen to your own heart, and head, to determine that one.

Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

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Heart Of Stone

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Heart of Stone Reviews

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 6, 2005

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Heart of Stone (2023)

August 11, 2023 by Robert Kojder

Heart of Stone , 2023.

Directed by Tom Harper. Starring Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt, Matthias Schweighöfer, Sophie Okonedo, Archie Madekwe, Jing Lusi, Paul Ready, Jónas Alfreð Birkisson, Jon Kortajarena, Enzo Cilenti, Joe Reisig, Luca Fiamenghi, Ruth Keeling, Neran Persaud, Lanre Malaoulu, Uriel Emil, Allan Hyde, Diana Yekinni, Ndoye Bigue, Anna Andresen, BD Wong, Mark Ivanir, and Glenn Close.

An intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping agency races to stop a hacker from stealing its most valuable and dangerous weapon.

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, Heart of Stone wouldn’t exist.

When all governments fail, there is the Heart. Tom Harper’s international espionage thriller Heart of Stone features this titular advanced AI program that Charter mission handlers (a covert global peacekeeping agency where rankings are handed out through card suits) interact with from a remote location (typically a bunker, but the device itself is stored in a blimp dubbed the Locker), touching, zooming in, and expanding various points of the hologram touchscreen while being fed an overwhelming amount of data related to completing the objective, all the way down to detailed routes that can be shared to an agent by rendering CGI GPS waypoints, similar to navigating the world map of a video game. It’s essentially a digital walkthrough to ensure a mission’s success.

Then there is the other half of the title’s equation, Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot), a double agent for the Charter undercover working with MI6 to bring down a notorious arms dealer (Enzo Cilenti) who has finally come out of hiding. More interesting than the specifics of her mission is her attitude towards fieldwork, following whatever orders her superiors from the Charter (Matthias Schweighöfer’s Jack of Hearts and Sophie Okonedo’s Nomad) pass on to her from the Heart, all while posing as an inexperienced hacker alongside her MI6 teammates, which include Jamie Dornan’s Parker, Jing Lusi’s Yang, and Paul Ready’s Bailey.

There is a relevant timeliness to Heart of Stone in that someone who is already a no-nonsense, mission-focused field agent, such as Rachel, is already suppressing her emotions, which is only accentuated when one of the most advanced AI algorithms put the screen is dictating every step she makes on the job, which is also kept a secret from her teammates. During a surprise ambush in one of their safehouses, the Heart behaves like one expects a computer program would, giving Rachel the best coordinates and route to escape and save her own life, insisting that there is no realistic probability that she will be able to save her partners.

Being the action hero of this narrative, Rachel naturally defies these orders. And while I don’t want to pretend Heart of Stone is an intelligent and profound piece of work (this is still a screenplay that hands its major characters numerous corny one-liners during action sequences related to card suits and more), that concept right there in a movie being released at this point in time is practically enough to generate investment and maintain it the entire way through. Of course, it also helps that there is full-throttle, white-knuckle action from beginning to end, rarely giving viewers a chance to take a moment to breathe and analyze how deeply silly these proceedings are.

Along the way, Rachel has to contend with a mysterious party crasher hacker working for an unknown group in Alia Bhatt’s Keya Dhawan, who wants access to the Heart for revenge-related matters. It also shouldn’t be a surprise that the aforementioned arms dealer is also seeking the algorithm for his own nefarious purposes. As for Rachel’s teammates, their bond is mostly explored through enjoying music (there are certainly unexpected choices for licensed music here) meant to remind her that human lives are at stake doing her missions. Although Parker has ulterior motives and an ax to grind against someone, allowing Jamie Dornan to revel in giving a borderline psychopathic performance.

Again, there is nothing special about the story besides its timeliness. Everyone, from the heroes to the villains, is given tragic backstories that don’t register beyond standard character motivation. However, Heart of Stone offers a breakneck-paced stream of varied set pieces benefiting both from a committed physical performance from Gal Gadot (still leaving something to be desired regarding emotional acting, but still able to sell the story) and globetrotting across locales taking advantage of the environments for visual splendor, allowing the action to blend into the backgrounds rather than forcing them into the chaos.

The hand-to-hand fights are brutal and more satisfying than green-screen heavy sequences (such as one that sees Tom Harper revisiting the skies from his previous biographical drama The Aeronauts ), and the script from Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder has the right amount of silliness to offset how implausible and dumb some of this is. Without giving away where the story ends, it also arrives at a reasonable conclusion for what this algorithm and general technology should be used for and how. Taken strictly as an action flick, Heart of Stone certainly doesn’t sink, often flying by with excitement, impressive stunt work, and a solid performance from Gal Gadot emphasizing violence and heart.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Heart of the Hunter’ on Netflix, a Rock-Solid South African Actioner About a Retired Killer Dragged Back Into the Biz

Where to stream:.

• Heart of the Hunter

• Action Movies

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Wages of Fear’ on Netflix, a Remake of the 1953 French Action Classic

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Innovative action movies are harder to find than the Ark of the Covenant, and that’s why the genre is more about honing the craft. Case in point, Heart of the Hunter (now on Netflix), a South African programmer that shows little interest in deviating from the retired-killer-is-heavily-compelled-to-get-back-in-the-game subgenre tropes – which so often have so much to do with special OPS or black OPS, always with the OPS the OPS the OPS – so it’d better give us some scintillating fights, chases and gunplay, right? And that’s a matter of style and execution, which director Mandla Dube shows often enough to maybe keep us watching. 

HEART OF THE HUNTER : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Zuko Khumalo (Bonko Khoza) thinks he’s out. But will they pull him back in? Probably! Especially now that he’s past his life as a black-ops assassin who slays people with a massive spear, and settled down for a nice boring domestic life with Malime (Masasa Mbangeni) and her boy Pakamile (Boleng Mogotsi). He repairs motorcycles for a living. He bought an engagement ring. He gets on smashingly with the kid. Nothing will force him back to his old life. Nothing! You might as well stop watching the movie right now, because it will be about little more than getting up and eating breakfast and playing with the boy and turning a wrench. HAPPINESS REIGNS.

But. Things are happening in the shadows. Sleazy corrupt scumbucket presidential candidate Mtima (Sisanda Henna) has a thing for taking care of dissenters. He’s targeted Johnny Klein (Peter Butler), an old ally of Zuko’s, as a terrorist. And he has the head of the Presidential Intelligence Agency, Molebogeng (Connie Ferguson), in his pocket. Johnny Klein knocks on Zuko’s door one morning and gets the pulling-back-in process moving, but it’s not easy – Zuko’s haunted by the time he unwittingly speared the living life out of a guy in front of the guy’s kid. We all know guys like Zuko, because we’ve all seen a lot of action movies about killers who’ve gotten out of the killing business and end up back in the killing business, because the killing business isn’t so easy to get out of but is very easy to get back into, especially if you have things you love in your life that become easy targets for villains. You know, like a dog, or a fiance with an adorable little boy.

Anyway, back to this Johnny Klein fella. Mtima is a full-blown threat to democracy, and there are other political considerations to consider if you’re up to considering them, but why would you be? You’re waiting for Zuko to get back to doing what he does best, and that ain’t being a family man (although we should give him credit for being pretty good at that). So of course, Zuko resists, but there comes a time when he has no choice but to not resist anymore. Meanwhile, there are a few other plot dev- er, characters padding out this story, including PIA agent Naledi (Nicole Fortuin), who does the right thing instead of the wrong thing like Molebogeng, and grizzled journalist Bressler (Deon Coetzee), who’s trying to take down Mtima with the fourth estate instead of whatever estate it is where one uses a terrifyingly huge spear to take people down – like Zuko does.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Does every new action movie beg comparison to John Wick ? Yep, pretty much.

Performance Worth Watching: Multi-dimensional characters in this film are, well, what’s the opposite of a dime a dozen? But Khoza is reasonably convincing in the role of a man pulled in two directions by his internal conflict – and good enough to keep us involved. 

Memorable Dialogue: Bressler gets all the good lines: “Please don’t call me ‘sir.’ I’m a scoundrel and a drunk.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Don’t judge Heart of the Hunter for being predictable. Judge it for its rock-solid technical prowess – thoughtful execution of hand-to-hand combat sequences, the occasional stylistic indulgence, slick editing and a pretty good eye for filling the frame. The film has the feel of a lowish-budget digitally-shot direct-to-VOD actioner of the type that inexplicably turns up on the Netflix top 10 once in a while (some of you out there really enjoy the Sniper franchise!), but with a more invigorating visual sense, which tells us that Dube isn’t necessarily collecting a paycheck, but may have something to prove as a director. 

And that modest, but notable invigoration keeps Heart of the Hunter afloat. There are moments when the film feels convoluted for its own sake (there’s a point where I wanted to yell PLEASE STOP INTRODUCING NEW CHARACTERS TO THE PLOT), when the melodrama feels a little overjuiced, when we yeah-right our way through a scene in which a truck stuffed with highly explosive gas tanks conveniently rolls into the frame so it can blow up real good and Zuko’s motorcycle can look cool as eff zooming through the flames. But Dube is wise enough to realize that practical effects render films like this far more credible, so he leans away from CGI, crashing real cars and emphasizing the tangible whoomp-and-crack of punches landing brutal body blows. It’s a pretty simple formula that CG-addled films seem to overlook: When violence feels realistic, the stakes are raised, and the movie is all the better for it. 

Our Call: Heart of the Hunter isn’t going to eclipse the Wick s and Bourne s of the world, but for a modestly engaging  

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Heart of the Hunter Review – Fast-Paced Action, But An Overly Complicated Story

Heart of the Hunter is a South African Netflix action movie directed by Mandla Dube from a script written by Willem Grobler and Deon Meyer , who also authored the novel that inspired the movie. Featuring impressive fights and special effects, the movie, which was filmed in South Africa . follows a former counter-intelligence assassin on one last mission to prevent his country from being ruled by an evil politician (that’s probably a redundant way of putting it). 

The movie starts with protagonist Zuko ( Bonko Khoza ) killing a target at the height of his assassin days. As something went wrong with that final assignment, Zuko hung his blood-stained machete for good. Two years later, the former mercenary lives in peaceful domestic bliss with single mom Malime ( Masasa Mbangeni ) and her son. 

Zuko is pulled back into his past life when his former handler and friend, Johnny Klein ( Peter Butler ) knocks on his door. Within days, the cartoonishly evil and muscular Daza Mtima ( Sisanda Henna ) will win the upcoming election unless Zuko can get his hand on some damning files against him and deliver them to the right person. Knowing that Johnny is trying to take him down, Mtima orders his head of security, Mo ( Connie Ferguson ), to track him down and neutralize the threat. 

As much as Zuko doesn’t want to get involved, talking to Johnny leads Mo’s men to him and endangers his family. Now, Zuko must race against the clock to complete Johnny’s final mission before Mtima’s people can harm his loved ones. 

Heart of the Hunter (Netflix)

Meanwhile, disgraced journalist Mike Bressler ( Deon Coetzee ) and his intern Allison start investigating Mtima’s alleged illegal dealings after receiving a tip from Johnny. Writing damning articles about the corrupt Mtima ruined Bressler’s career and reputation, and now he’s willing to stick his neck on the line to expose the evils inside the government. 

As far as action flicks go, Heart of the Hunter delivers well-choreographed violence, impressive special effects, and good-looking fight scenes. It features all the tropes we’ve come to love from the genre and even turns John Wick -esque towards the end. The performances are perfectly convincing, especially Bonko Khoz, who has all the attributes befitting an action hero – handsome, broody, and a badass.  

While this isn’t a terrible movie, the narrative is far too convoluted, and it’s hard to keep track of who the constant stream of new characters is. There’s almost no expositional effort into introducing who these characters are, how they know each other, or what world they inhabit. The viewer is thrown straight into the story and expected to already know the set-up. It’s like watching the two-part grand finale of a series that’s been running for at least seven seasons. 

Despite its flaws, Heart of the Hunter provides the perfect escapism for your casual weekend stream. It might be confusing to follow, but you never have to wait too long until something blows up or Khoz’s character expertly kills a bunch of nondescript bad guys.

I also delved into the ending of Heart of the Hunter , in case you are interested in how the film closed out.

Article by Lori Meek

Lori Meek has been a Ready Steady Cut contributing writer since September 2022 and has had over 400 published articles since. She studied Film and Television at Southampton Solent University, where she gained most of her knowledge and passion for the entertainment industry. Lori’s work is also featured on platforms such as TBreak Media and ShowFaves.

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‘La Chimera’: Josh O’Connor Digs His Own Grave — and Comes Back a Star

By David Fear

Legend has it that if you were to stroll around Riparbella, a small Italian village in the rural part of Tuscany, you would come across a number of tombs. Some were hidden, some were open, and many of these underground burial sites were more than 2000 years old, filled with ancient artifacts. For centuries, they were left undisturbed, as a sign of respect for the dead. Then, in the early 1980s, grave robbers known as tombaroli would ransack these sacred spaces and sell the stolen goods on the black market, which allegedly catered to both busy museum curators and the idle rich. Should these thieves be lucky, they might net a small fortune courtesy of a rare Etruscan vase procured during a nocturnal raid. Should they be unlucky, they’d be cursed by the enraged spirits of the deceased. Roll, the dice, take your chances.

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There’s no point in trying to describe what Rohrwacher is leading up to exactly, given what a mood piece this film is. But you may have already begun to suspect that La Chimera is also, among the many other genres it’s pillaging, a ghost story. Not in the gothic, I-see-dead-people way necessarily, but in the manner of how those no longer shuffling on this mortal coil continue to communicate with those left behind. You might notice a red string flailing and trailing about the frame several times during Rohrwacher’s more poetic detours. That tiny bit of yarn ends up paying off in such a profound manner that, once you get to the final scene, it’s hard not to break into a slow clap. Some wishes can be granted, at a price. And others, well …they truly are an impossible dream. The dead remain the dead. But Italian cinema? The sort of go-for-baroque moviemaking that once characterized the European nation as a lodestar of auteurism? That, as La Chimera proves, is alive and well.

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Heart of Stone

• Episode aired Feb 21, 2024

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