Heart of Stone Review: Gal Gadot, Alia Bhatt front lacklustre spy-thriller

Heart of Stone is a female-led spy-thriller film akin to James Bond and Mission Impossible franchises. The Tom Harper directorial premiered on Netflix on August 11. It features Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan and Alia Bhatt, who marks her Hollywood debut. 

In what can aptly be called a by-the-book film, Heart of Stone utilises age-old tropes about the ‘government good guys’ MI6 embarking on a mission to take down an international arms dealer. There is a potentially lethal and covert party at play and this is supposed to stress the intensity of the film’s evolving plot, but it ends up being a cliche. By the end of its two-hour-long runtime, Heart of Stone feels like a film you've seen many times before.

2 things you need to know: 

• Heart of Stone marks Alia Bhatt's Hollywood debut.
• The supporting cast includes Matthias Schweighöfer, Jing Lusi, and Sophie Okonedo among others.

Hot Take

While Heart of Stone's opening scene is uncharacteristically long, it allows the viewers to get familiar with the characters and the situation at play. The plot suffers from logical inconsistencies as the characters go back and forth on their loyalties. Therefore, it comes as no surprise, that at any given point, the film fails to find an anchor. 

(Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone in Heart of Stone | Image: netflix/Instagram)  

Is Heart of Stone worth the hype? 

While director Tom Harper’s vision for the film does manage to come through, he takes too much time to get there. It’s a choke-full of plot points that occupy space in the story, but rob the film of its soul. For those who don’t want to get into the technical aspects and just want to see their favourite actors have a good time, it's still a one-time watch. But not more.

A miss for the world-building

Heart of Stone starts fully self-aware. It has an MI6 team, an internationally united special agents group The Charter and a team of terrorists to be taken down. It’s all centred around the Heart, an artificial intelligence capable of digging through exabytes of data to predict the future. However, there’s no clear indication in the film of how these organisations function. Who is funding them? Are they ordained by a globally sanctioning body such as the United Nations to carry out their operations? The missing pieces raise a lot of questions that remain unanswered. 

(The MI6 team during a brief room scene in Heart of Stone | Image: netflix/Instagram)

The good part here is that the tech-concept execution gives it a unique edge over its contemporaries (The Grey Man, Jack Ryan) but its plot finds uncanny similarity with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. 

MI 7 vs Heart of Stone 

Both these films are similar in their spy-thriller antics, triple-crossing, and use of high-tech gadgets. Most importantly, they're connected through their antagonists- the omnipresent AI. In Mission Impossible 7, the ‘Entity’ is pulling the strings. In Heart of Stone, however, AI functions at the hands of those who wield it. There’s an odd polarity concerning where the AI is contained because, in MI 7, it's at the bottom of the ocean in a submarine. In Heart of Stone, it’s stored in an airship.

(Alia Bhatt as Keya Dhawan in Heart of Stone | Image: aliaabhatt/Instagram)

Mission Impossible 7 and Heart of Stone are both Chase-The-MacGuffin-esque films, but the way MI 7 is several cuts above is because it’s fast when it needs to be, and it’s slow when the time arises. Moreover, the characters in MI are a lot more expressive, and they connect with the audience because of how deep the larger story runs.

Music doesn’t fit the tone

On another note, there’s a consistent problem with the tone of Heart of Stone. The music, composed by Steven Price, seems like it’s for a slightly hip Indiana Jones-type film. This disarray is felt both in terms of how the music suits the scenes it's accompanying, as well as the themes it's supposed to be emphasising. With everything in the film being so tech-savvy, the score feels incongruent. This persists throughout the film and ruins the majority of the experience. 

Stream it or skip it?

The singular, but intermittent merit that Heart of Stone has is the acting in it. Sophie Okonedo, who plays the role of Nomad, shines not because of how her character is written, but because of how she plays the role by carrying out subtleties. Gal Gadot in the film appears how she appears in other films. She is unidimensional as an actor but fits the bill when it comes to action. 

(Jamie Dornan as Parker in Heart of Stone | Image: netflix/Instagram)

Alia Bhatt’s Keya is young and capable, but naive. Her journey to finding her moral compass and eventually fighting for the right side is another cliche but one goes with it because she is the only character who has a redemption arc. 

Similarly, Jamie Dornan’s Parker keeps on losing layers of his character throughout the film, and it's never really made clear how he turned villain. The missing bits rob the character of its authenticity and reliability.

Bottomline

Fans of the spy-thriller genre might not like Heart of Stone, but those who just want to enjoy action can give it a try. It is like The Gray Man – good casting, acting, and cinematography, but essentially a film that ends up bearing the brunt of bad writing.

Rating: 2.5/5