Tom Harper’s Heart of Stone is a paint-by-numbers global espionage thriller that isn’t done any favors by releasing so soon after Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. The film is similar in scope and tone to the most recent Ethan Hunt spy caper but vastly inferior by almost every other measure, especially when it comes to action and characterization.
Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot) works for the U.K.’s MI6 as a technician, overseen by Parker (Jamie Dornan). In the opening sequence, set at a party in the Italian Alps, the MI6 team is shadowing Mulvaney (Enzo Cilenti), “Europe’s most wanted arms dealer,” who’s making his first public appearance in three years. When the team’s cover is blown, Stone has to navigate the treacherous terrain in the dark, first by parachute and then by motorbike, which the filmmakers turn into a blurry, CGI-heavy eyesore. Cue the Bond-esque credit sequence, set to a tune by Noga Erez that’s as monotonal as Gadot’s default mode of intense consternation.
The film’s title is accurate insofar as its plot and personality-free characters struggle to exert an emotional pull. Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder’s script is a stockpile of flavorless exposition for its own sake. Throughout, two-faced agents engage in innocuous chitchat, with rote tech jargon, from “writing a new access code” to “inserting you into facial recognition,” falling from their mouths like bricks. At one point, field agent Bailey (Paul Ready) says, “You got this,” as Stone exits their spy van for the first time—this after making a few wisecracks about his cats. The moment recalls Tom Arnold’s similar shtick in True Lies, if not the actor’s zesty comic brio.
The plot gets twistier, if not more interesting, when it’s discovered that a genius hacker, Keya (Alia Bhatt), is chasing a mysterious weapon, which is, per an agent named Jack of Hearts (Matthias Schweighöfer), “a quantum computer sophisticated enough to hack into anything, anywhere.” This sends MI6 first to Lisbon, then to the Lompoul Desert in Senegal, and then to Reykjavik in search of more information. Every pit stop is marked by a pro-forma spectacle of shooting and chasing, which only serves to unintentionally underline that the characters exist merely to move the plot along. The force of the film’s leaden proceedings is such that even Glenn Close, a typically unsubtle actor, barely musters a whimper as the King of Diamonds.
The cinematography looks striking enough throughout the various set pieces, but little happens in them to elevate Heart of Stone past its hackneyed foundation. The pit stop in Senegal aims for a grittier quality, as Stone and Keya are being pursued by numerous armed men, but there’s an appalling moment when Mama T (Ndoye Bigue), a Fela Kuti-loving Senegalese woman, is executed at point-blank range by a baddie known as The Blond (Jon Kortajarena). It’s a horrifying and unearned bit of business in an otherwise insipid spy thriller, primarily because it never justifies its inclusion beyond its superficial, if dubious, shock value.
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Ho hum. Another tedious film misleadingly glorifying the unaccountable and violent operatives working for the British government to protect the profits of corporations. No mention in the review as to whether the military edited/co-wrote the script, as is standard practice in this genre. Sceptical readers are advised to look at the Spy Culture site run by Tom Secker.