Heart of Stone: Netflix’s new action movie less Wonder Woman, more Waiting for Gadot

Heart of Stone (M, 125mins) Directed by Tom Harper **

“A genuine dog’s breakfast.”

Heart of Stone’s MI6 boss’ assessment of his charges’ latest operation would be an equally adroit summation of this loud, lunk-headed cyber-thriller in which no action-movie cliche is left unused.

With the charismatic Gal Gadot as its headliner, a plot that requires plenty of globetrotting (everywhere from the Italian Alps to London, Lisbon, the Senegal desert and Iceland) and an A.I. MacGuffin that’s literally in the movie’s title, along with the Israeli actor’s character’s name, it’s clear that this has designs on being the start of a Mission: Impossible-style franchise (although the premise here is kind of the reverse of Dead Reckoning – keeping a benevolent, ever-vigilant A.I. tool from falling into the wrong hands – with a touch of Minority Report thrown in for good measure).

Unfortunately, weighed down by too much rushed, ham-fisted world-building around Gadot’s Rachel Stone’s real-employers “the Charter” (she and her fellow agents have playing card monikers like the Nine of Hearts), her unconvincing cover as a British Intelligence tech nerd and an early double-cross that doesn’t leave the story with many places to go, it all feels like a po-faced version of Matthew Vaughn’s gleefully anarchic Kingsman series.

When not assisting Gadot with options for getting out of a tight spot (a zip-line here, a conveniently placed snowbike there), we’re supposed to believe “the Heart” (“the closest thing mankind has come to perfect intelligence”, as one character enthuses) has also helped take out a terror cell who hijacked an oil tanker in the Panama Canal, stopped a potential sarin gas attack in Paris and tripped up hackers attempting to nobble the North American power grid, thanks to its predictive powers.

As Jamie Dornan’s cynical MI6 man Parker notes, coupled with “the Charter’s” co-operative of “highly trained agents working together to keep peace in a highly turbulent world”, it all sounds “like a Saturday morning cartoon” (an observation not easily refuted when you consider that fellow Netflix action movie The Old Guard’s Greg Rucka is on co-writing duties, alongside Hidden Figures’ Allison Schroeder, the latter’s presence perhaps explaining why the female characters feel better written than their male counterparts).

Glenn Close and Sophie Okonedo appear infrequently to add some gravitas, while Army of the Dead’s Matthias Schweighofer’s trademark antics denote a half-hearted attempt to provide some comedic relief and RRR’s Ali Bhatt’s computer genius definitely felt under-utilised.

Director Tom Harper (The Aeronauts, Wild Rose) tries to hold things together, but when state-of-the-art tracking technology leads to an online chat that seems straight out of the ‘90s-set Sandra Bullock-starrer The Net (and the soundtrack randomly shuffles Lizzo with classic Foreigner and Fleetwood Mac), it all feels a little too shambolic and cobbled together.

Fans of Gadot will likely lap this up, while I expect at least a certain sector of loudly opinionated keyboard warriors to be outraged at the story’s less-than-subtle repudiation of toxic masculinity.

What is clear though, especially in light of recent utterings from those behind the ever-evolving DC cinematic universe (as well as her character there’s continuing “surprise” cameos in other people’s movies), is that, rather than kick-start a new chapter in the 38-year-old’s career, this is simply a placeholder until the lasso of truth comes calling once again.

Heart of Stone is now available to stream on Netflix.