Heart of Stone earned Gal Gadot a reported cool $5 million for five months of work. With an estimated budget of $68 million, one wonders if Netflix believes in the old adage, “there’s no such thing as bad press,” or if they now wish they’d cast an unknown and invested Gadot’s paycheck in better writers.

Heart of Stone

***SPOILER ALERT*** There’s no way to write a review that includes even a vague summary of this film without spoiling the only thing it has resembling an interesting twist. So, be forewarned, Gal Gadot is a super-spy in it. ***END SPOILER WARNING***

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Heart of Stone is a spy-thriller that follows super-spy Rachel Stone (Do you get it? Her name is Stone, and she’s detached) as she tries to save the world. Little does she know that she’ll end up saving herself.

It might be labeled as a thriller, but Heart of Stone offers all the thrills of getting a haircut at your local Discount Cuts. You go in not expecting much yet are somehow almost always disappointed at the end. The plot is so predictive-text-level formulaic that it’s a wonder chatGPT doesn’t have a writing credit. The performances are generally ok, especially in light of the material the actors were working with. Still, arguably Heart of Stone’s greatest weakness is that it inexpertly tries to be every popular spy-thriller at once yet ends up as a two-dimensional child’s drawing of each instead… nah, it’s the substandard writing and poorly conceived plot.

At the heart of Heart of Stone is a super-intelligent AI system reminiscent of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning’s The Entity. However, there are two significant differences: 1.) Whereas both MI’s The Entity and The Heart (this film’s AI)  are so powerful that each can predict the future with near-perfect accuracy, The Entity is a menacing shadow that weighs on ever moment of MI7 and The Heart is regularly wrong, usually impotent, and easily compromised. 2.) The Heart is primarily used as a tool for good.

The film is full of shlocky and childish writing tropes that essentially went out of fashion in the early 90s. For instance, the title of the film (practically ripped off of the cover of a cheap romance novel), “Heart of Stone,” is a play on Gal Gadot’s character’s name, her general disposition, the name of the primary plot device, and the narrative device used to resolve the film’s central conflict. Get it? Rachel Stone is supposed to be a cold and dispassionate operative who protects and serves “The Heart,” however, her inherent need to emotionally connect drives her to bond with one of the villains, thereby saving both of them from themselves. Do you get it?

Gal Gadot does her best to step up to the role of double-O XX but mostly delivers a warm soymilk performance instead. She’s never been a powerhouse performer, and she does what she does best in Heart of Stone, which is to be statuesque and stunning. That’s not to say that her performance is wooden or even bad. Instead, it’s best characterized as disinterested and occasionally awkwardly dispassionate.

Where some actors (Tom Hardy comes to mind) are master craftsmen who can tap into and thereby make you feel the emotional turmoil of something as banal as gum manufacturing, Gadot is more of a journeyman. She’s neither distractingly uncomfortable nor particularly dynamic. So too, is her performance in this picture.

The fault doesn’t lie entirely on her shoulders. With such tedious writing, it’s a wonder that any of the actors or actresses were able to do much more than competently navigate the film. However, in an act of cinematic magic, director Tom Harper (the real star of this film) manages to keep the pacing up and the visuals interesting enough to qualify as decent background noise.

Ultimately, Heart of Stone tips the scale from forgettable to avoidable. If you’re in the mood for an action-packed spy-thriller, you can check out the entire Mission Impossible catalog at Paramount+.

WOKE ELEMENTS

There might be more than what follows, but, in full disclosure, I was so bored by the movie’s end that I was tweaking the website while I watched.

• There are a disproportionate number of actresses in traditionally male roles. However, none of them are snarky superwomen, not even the super-spies. The movie does a fairly decent job of not making the willowy Gadot or the other tiny lady spies able to dominate in hand-to-hand combat. Gadot often comes out on top only after being manhandled and creatively using her environment as force multipliers.
• Of course, the main bad guy is a white guy who spouts off more than once about the haves and the have-nots. Whereas, ***SPOILER ALERT*** the only bad guy to have a change of heart and turn out to be a good guy who was, due to no fault of her own, led astray is, of course, a woman of color. ***END SPOILER***
• Pet “parents” aren’t treated with scorn.
• “The problem with men like you… blah blah blah.” is a line in the film.
• The only good white guy (who isn’t murdered early on) is a goofy beta.
• Oatmilk