Heart of Stone
At what point in going through Netflix’s original action films can one say that they are, in their own way, keeping the tradition of the “direct-to-video” action movie alive? I know I joked about “Tenet” being a blockbuster version of that type of ‘90s/early ‘00s video store staple, but Netflix has really leaned into the idea, whether it’s putting stars together or giving directors ridiculous amounts of money to make the most generic films possible. There’s something admirable about their ability to aim to genuine creativity in their narrative TV while much of their original movie output is geared towards the tropes of my youth, but “Heart of Stone” feels particularly egregious in this department.
The thing that makes “Heart of Stone” appear especially wrenching in how generic it is is how it starts off with a compelling premise before becoming as bland and unoriginal a spy movie as you can get. At the beginning of the film, Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot’s character) works for MI6 as a computer analyst who doesn’t seem very adept in the field. It turns out, however, she’s more adept than she lets on; it turns out that she also works for an organization called The Charter, a high-tech spy agency also interested in similar goals, but largely controlled by the Heart, an artificial intelligence that could prove deadly in the wrong hands.
If that premise sounds familiar, it’s not going to be shocking that the same production company responsible for the last few “Mission: Impossible” films is producing this one. But a third of the way into this film, something happens that dumbs this film down from a compelling, “True Lies”-type film into one of the dullest Bond ripoffs ever. Gadot and Jamie Dornan as part of her MI6 team are good, but this film doesn’t have the weight to be anything meaningful. So, we are left to enjoy the silliness of how the title is telegraphed by the story, and the soundtrack has some good tunes that really throw off the tone of what this film is trying to be vs. what it is. Those elements are what had my thinking about the days of generic action films on video store shelves. They would have flopped in theatres, but as a Friday night watch at home, they delivered the goods.
