Posted by Lured in by the exciting, thrill a minute trailer and the 4/5 review from The Times quoted in the blurb I hopefully clicked on Heart of Stone. More fool me. Directed by Tom Harper (Misfits, Peaky Blinders), Heart of Stone is a Mission Impossible style spy thriller with a bankable star (Gal Gadot) and a promising set up.
Alas as fish accompanies chips, day follows night and politicians tell lies, this Netflix flick disappoints on many levels. Gal Gadot is super sleuth Rachel Stone who works with MI6 and suddenly finds herself and her team of quirky clichés at the centre of a plot to stop a world changing AI from falling into the wrong hands. After a good, True Lies style start at a ski resort, H.O.S very quickly descends into generic spy caper territory with a run of the mill plot copied from the pages of the latest Mission Impossible – complete with clearly signposted twists and turns.
Aside from the snowy spectacle at the start and a high octane car chase through the streets of Lisbon the action is by the book and doesn’t live long in the memory. Nor do the rather paper thin characters – aside from Gal Gadot and Jamie Dornan who, despite having little to work with, are engaging as fellow sleuths Rachel Stone and Parker respectively.
A good, True Lies-esque start soon fades and what follows is an inferior mix of James Bond and Mission Impossible that tries and fails to build a franchise, this is best left alone. It follows the tried and tested streaming rule book of half heartedly churning out disappointing flicks with a big star and an interesting concept – see The Gray Man, The Old Guard, Project Power, Spenser Confidential and Without Remorse amongst many, many others for further details.
4/10
Lofty Music and Film 