A Forgettable Action Flick with Gal Gadot
Gal Gadot shines in this bland thriller that is aimless
Heart of Stone, directed by Tom Harper, stars Gal Gadot in the lead role while Alia Bhatt and Jamie Dornan and Sophie Okonedo play supporting roles. Gal Gadot plays Rachel Stone, a not so intelligent operative who is on a mission to take down Keya Dhawan (Alia Bhatt).
The film opens with Stone and her team planning to extract weapons dealer Mulvaney. When the plan goes South, the movie reveals that Stone is working for an organisation named ‘The Charter’. She keeps this information secret from her team consisting of Bailey (Paul Ready) and Yang( Jing Luisi) and Parker (Jamie Dornan), which maintains the tension at least for a while.
Alia Bhatt initially showed promise as Dhawan, but the film is afraid of raising the stakes. She tries to add her starpower to a character as dumb as Dhawan, but even her acting efforts couldn’t save this one-dimensional character. Stone doesn’t confront her until halfway through the film and when they do, it results in the most poorly choreographed fight scene.
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When Stone reveals her true identity to her crew, she is taken by surprise, as Parker tells her that he too is a double agent working with Dhawan to take down the Charter, a twist so big that the movie makes it impossible to follow up on it. He kills her crew in the process, and I wish he didn’t since he is just a superficial threat.
The Heart is an AI that is so advanced that it predicts the future possibilities of Stone’s endless adventures. This could have been a cool plot element, but it is just a tool to divide the protagonist and her bosses who are so pissed that she never follows the algorithm. She keeps criticising them for failing to think outside the box and this eventually makes the AI an unnecessary, albeit fancy, distraction.
The fight sequences in this film were fantastic but eventually they are treated as irrelevant distractions. The result is an exposition-ridden snooze fest that has no semblance of a plot. Even Stone, who seemed to be such an interesting character, doesn't have much to do towards the end.
The movie is also unsure about what it wants to do with Dhawan, who takes too long to learn that Parker is a power hungry maniac who is willing to take lives. When she learns that she cannot make him see the truth, she conveniently jumps ship and sides with Stone.
As a result, all the tension is lost in pursuit of a forgettable conflict with an antagonist who doesn’t exactly know what he wants. Meanwhile, The Charter seems to be barely involved in helping Stone win her battle.
The ending wasn’t too good either. It is ironic, considering how well the film started. It’s almost as if the writers ran out of ideas and considered the last resort as the way to close this story.
Rating: 3/10
