Gal Gadot is settling into Netflix after the success of Red Notice and plans to start her own action franchise a like Jason Bourne, James Bond, and Mission: Impossible. Heart of Stone is a film that openly acknowledges its similarity to Mission: Impossible and depicts the tale of a super-spy who must rescue the planet.
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| Gal Gadot as Agent Stone in Heart of Stone (2023) |
Chance, coincidence, or a sad sign of the times? In both Heart of Stone and Mission: Impossible 7, a dangerous artificial giga-intelligence that resembles a high-end USB key and has the ability to predict human behaviour poses a threat. At the arc of a universe, where their journeys mix in an eternal flow, Ethan Hunt and Rachel Stone could at last cross paths.
Hollywood action movies are getting more and more diluted in the same pseudo-modern soup, despite the hundreds of millions of times they have been produced ("This scenario which criticises the AIs could really have been written by an AI lol"), even if it means becoming the farce's turkey.
The comedic absurdity of a certified copy intended to be different coupled with Gal Gadot's original vision for Heart of Stone as a franchise make it the least you can do. Selling the bear's skin before having purchased it is another indication of the times. "Jason Bourne, Mission: Impossible, and James Bond were my childhood favourites. Instead of making a hero narrative that has been done countless times before, I wanted to make a female-led action movie that was for everyone. After this joke, we'll give you a little breathing room.
Due to the ridiculous plot (super-spy, team of specialists, agency more secret than secret, code names, betrayals, and another bite-me-le-knot MacGuffin), it is challenging to play the scared virgin.
Heart of Stone was built that way; in fact, it's the only thing that keeps her alive and in the public eye. The actual issue is that the Gal Gadot-led movie falls short of its true goal, which is to entertain audiences enough to make them forget about this cynical equation.
When Agent Stone's sole standout action scene is a copy-and-paste Lidl recreation of one of the finest moments from the Mission: Impossible series (the base-jump from Fallout), there may be a problem. Everything about the staging calls to mind this iconic scene created by Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise when Gal Gadot leaps out of an aeroplane and spins in the air.
The heroine's wingsuit is the only distinction. Unfortunately for her, Lara Croft did it first in the film Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life.
Heart of Stone demonstrates an act of bravery around this time. Before and after that, there were dull shootouts, pointless vehicle chases, and cliched fights, all presented in a series of postcard panoramas to stimulate the visual nerve every 12 minutes. There isn't anything particularly noteworthy or memorable, at least not for moviegoers, with the exception of a colourful parachute in the opening sequence and a cute little motorbike tumble in the conclusion.
Director Tom Harper, who has worked on films like La Dame en noir 2 and The Aeronauts, is unimpressive. Second-unit director Robert Alonzo, whose resume is a bit schizophrenic (The Batman, The Flash), is in charge of the action scenes.
The staging makes the assumption that there is no bias on the screen. The limited sights in FPS mode are seldom utilised, the poor connections extend straightforward camera movements without resulting in a sequence shot, and the very relative quality of the visual effects is immediately apparent when light is present.
Aside from the action, Heart of Stone is as bad as Minority Report's AI interface, Minority Report's focus, and Horizon: Zero Dawn's main character, not to mention Steven Price's horrendous score. As a result, the movie comes out as being ridiculous.
Heart of Stone is excessively lengthy (two hours, to be exact), and it talks a lot. This is the icing on the cake of any self-respecting lousy movie. A gallery of flawlessly insipid characters are produced as a result of the script by Greg Rucka (The Old Guard) and Allison Schroeder (Les Figures de l'ombre) weaving around the action sequences.
The boss is a person with authority? She is not amused and does not grin. Do you have to win over your coworkers' hearts? Here is a little dancing moment from a Lizzo song. The phoney or actual evil people may be identified just as quickly and easily as a mistake in a Widescreen article. It has a tonne of supporting characters and plenty of opportunities to sneer and believe that Mission: Impossible looks like Shakespeare just next door, which is the worst of both worlds.
Heart of Stone's quest to create a mythology of its own is his sole accomplishment. With her eyes on John Wick and James Bond, she is plainly absurd and serves to set the stage for the possible series. However, it is because of this mythology that everyone can recite wonderful passages including the term "heart" (such as the heart in the heroine's secret name, the heart in the card game, the heart in humans fighting robots, as well as the heart in the original film's title).
It's possible that Heart of Stone was created just as a formula if it appears more like an Excel table on a green screen than a genuine movie. It's the perfect relationship thanks to Netflix and Hollywood. Actors and actresses are seeking for a place to have fun and make good money, while the SVoD behemoth is frantically searching for franchises and talent to display. Gal Gadot and her 20 million stamp for Red Notice (she would have gotten around the same amount for this one) are fully aware of it.
Everyone benefits, with the possible exception of the movie business, which essentially sabotages itself.
Heart of Stone is primarily a vehicle for Gal Gadot, an actor and producer through her Pilot Wave box (with Skydance Media, the production company behind Mission: Impossible since Ghost Protocol), similar to The Old Guard with Charlize Theron or 355 with Jessica Chastain.
She is, however, playing nothing more than a parody of this movie and what it may stand for in the system (much like Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt, Matthias Schweighöfer, and Sophie Okonedo). With the exception of the décor and the height of the forehead brows, nothing changes between the strength of Wonder Woman's love and Rachel Stone, who attacks the enemy because she is good and has friends.
The most tragic aspect is that the movie itself appears to show this impasse. The premise of Heart of Stone's opening (Gal Gadot is not the spy dressed as a model who wanders in a party, but the nerd in the van) is quickly abandoned, and the film's ending (in which star Gal Gadot roams the party looking like a model while the real nerds remain in the van) is quickly restored. You spend a lot of time and money to get there, and all you get is a Colgate grin that makes you want to cancel your internet service.