Heart of Stone - An Entertaining Enough Spy Action Movie with Gal Gadot as the Super Agent

After being shown in the coming soon section in Netflix for a while and also getting hyped as Gal Gadot's actioner movie, I was looking forward to give this a try on its day of release. So yesterday night I immediately watch it as soon as I got the chance. OK let us get into the movie now. 

Brief Story Line

Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot - Death on the Nile, Red Notice etc) who was working with MI6 agents that included Parker (Jamie Dornan - Robin Hood 2018 version, Belfast etc), Yang (Jing Lusi - Crazy Rich Asians, Gangs of London TV series etc) and Bailey (Paul Ready - Bodyguard TV series etc) were given the task to capture an arms dealer. However some woman who later on revealed to be a brilliant hacker named Keya (Alia Bhatt - Raazi, Gully Boy etc) somehow managed to intrude in their mission. Bailey suspected that she was part of a shadowy spy organization not affiliated to any country called the Charter.

Meanwhile the Charter which truly exist and led by one of its senior agent called Nomad (Sophie Okenodo - Hotel Rwanda, Tsunami: The Aftermath TV series etc) with Jack of Hearts ( Matthias Schweighöfer - Army of Thieves etc) were also trying to locate Keya and find out what she was really after.

So what would happen to Stone and her fellow agents? And why was the Charter heavily involved? You can find them all in this movie. 

End of Brief Story Line

You know at first I was a bit surprised with the character of Rachel Stone in here. But after a while then I realized the reason and it was actually quite OK, although there was a bit of similar feeling to the series Citadel starring Priyanka Chopra. Anyway as the story progressed it was quite clear that the plot was quite standard and nothing too extraordinary. However there was a shocking twist in the middle of the movie that I probably should have noticed if I watched it with more concentration.

Aside from the generic plot, the action was the most exciting part of the film. It was entertaining looking at Gal Gadot punching, kicking, wrestling, racing, shooting and so many other stuff as a super agent instead of a superhero. There were plenty of action sequence that were quite awesome with some better than expected visual effects. Personally to me they did not look too obviously computer generated, although some of them were done in the night and looked too dark. 

The cast were generally OK in their roles with Jamie Dornan as the totally serious agent, while Jing Lusi was surprisingly agile in fight scenes. In addition to those names I mentioned above, there were also familiar faces like BD Wong (Jurassic World: Dominion etc) as King of Clubs and another well known star as King of Diamonds. The film had other supporting cast such as Archie Madekwe (Voyagers etc) as one of the Charter's agent Ivo, Jon Kortajarena as one of the assassins after Stone and few others.

The movie's duration was a little over 2 hours which included enough action scenes that should satisfy people looking for those traits. There were no ultra violent scenes and no sexual scenes either which made the PG-13 classification rightfully done. Although there was no mid or post end credit scenes, but the movie's ending was quite predictable and obviously gave us hint of possible movies in future. I read that they were thinking of developing this into a new franchise. Sadly though the critics were not too kind while I am not too sure about the audience reception yet as it is afterall just one day release.

This film was directed by Tom Harper (Wild Rose, The Aeronauts etc) who did not seem to have big budget blockbuster action movie to his credit. The writers were Greg Rucka best known as novel and comic writers such as Stumptown, Detective Comics and many more, together with Allison Schroeder (co-writer of Hidden Figures). Oh btw, the first few minutes of action sequence felt like something from James Bond movies, but the opening song was not a memorable and stylist ones like them. In fact, the  background songs probably not their strongest suit (at least for me), although the musical score was still pretty good.

Overall this is a quite entertaining spy action movie with female super spy as the lead character instead of the usual male agents. Although the plot might be too standard, but the action sequence were enjoyable enough. My favorite would be the one in Lisbon and the chasing in Iceland was amazing too. But somehow there was a feeling that I would probably like it even better if there were more truly spectacular ones. So if you want to see Gal Gadot becoming this super agent and doing all those action scenes, then you would really love this film. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars