Heart of Stone Movie Review: The chatter about Artificial Intelligence has been going on for quite some time now. While many of us vary about the consequences of giving such a power to our technological devices, most of us are intrigued by the infinite possibilities AI can bring us. The rise in courses catering to the basics AI, its application in various fields have popped up all over the globe. AI despite all its multifunctionality and possibilities is just a machine. It lacks the human emotions and the approach humans have towards problem-solving. AI would analyze a problem and present a statistical number, without thinking about the human factor (at least yet). 

We have had several movies outlining the pros and cons of relying heavily on AI. These movies also underline the need of human intervention when the machines overpower high-risk decisions. One such movie which presents the wonders of AI in national and global security, and also presents the need of human intervention when making such decisions is Netflix’s latest action flick Heart of Stone. The movie stars Gal Gadot, Alia Bhatt ad Jamie Dornan in prominent roles. It was released on Netflix on August 11, 2023. 

Heart of Stone Trailer

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Heart of Stone Cast – Heart of Stone Summary

Heart of Stone is a superspy action flick starring Gal Gadot in the lead as Rachael Stone. She is an undercover agent of the Charter who works in the MI6. She along with Yang (played by Jing Lusi), Parker (played by Jamie Dornan) and Bailey (Paul Ready) carry out undercover missions for the MI6. While everyone thinks that the Charter is just a myth, it is very much a reality. Alia Bhatt in her international debut, is Keya Dhawan. She has an antagonist role in the film.

The Charter has agents all over the world, with codenames borrowed from the deck of cards. Gal Gadot’s Stone is called Nine of Hearts. Her team at the Charter consists of Jack (played by Matthias Schweighofer) and Nomad (played by Sophie Okonedo). The Charter uses The Heart, the best thing in artificial intelligence in the world. The Heart analyses all the data, statistics and other variables from all over the globe to give a near-accurate prediction. Its analysis power is so strong that it could even predict the future events.

Keya Dhawan is a 22-year old cyber hacker who is proficient in her job. She has her own vendetta for which she wants to possess the Heart. She aims to leak highly confidential information to bring down corrupt businessmen and officials. Stone is tasked to keep the Heart safe at all costs. Thus begins a cat and mouse chase between the two. But despite the Heart’s god-like powers, there was something even it did not see coming.

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Heart of Stone Movie Review

Heart of Stone is a highly engaging movie from the start to finish. The action sequences are concise and impactful. Gal Gadot breaks out of her Wonder Woman image and transforms into a highly intelligent spy for this action flick. Jamie Dornan’s Parker is a welcome surprise to the story. The plot twist where we find that Parker has joined hands with Keya is quite a surprise.

Alia Bhatt is one of the most popular actors in Bollywood. With this venture, she proved that she do an action flick with equal ease as she does romcoms in Bollywood. Her character had a good screen time, and dialogues full of dry humour. While some might say that the dialogue delivery felt flat at places, one can credit it to the long length of dialogues which attempted to fit in humour and also explain her story. (See what I did there?)

While there were instances where the story felt predictable, it did not lessen the entertainment factor. If anything, the introduction of the Heart and artificial intelligence underlined once again that there needs to have a human factor when making any decision. A machine would give us options or a top probability, but it comes to us humans to take a call of the better of all humanity and living things around us.

Heart of Stone has its heart in the right place and it also has a potential to present to us a female superspy in the modern times. Seeing women holding decision-making power positions and calling the shots is a welcome change from seeing the male characters being in higher chairs of power. Gadot’s Stone aka Nine of Hearts, Okonedo’s Nomad and Bhatt’s Dewan bring with them a balance which was not seen before.

Despite being an action flick, Heart of Stone does not pose unnecessary violent actions, foul language or an ego boost for the characters. It goes to show that even action movie with national-level threat stories can be carried out with a semblance of a good storytelling and balanced character emotions. Constantly hitting others, being excessively violent and speaking foul language never helped solve a crisis after all, it only led to wars.

Will there be a Heart of Stone sequel?

In the concluding montages of the movie, we see that Keya is put behind the bars. But she is given a chance to redeem herself by joining the Charter. Her character is effectively called Joker for her wild card entry to the team. She joins Jack and Stone in a new mission.

Up until now we saw Jack giving remote assistance to Stone, but now he was seen in the field. It would be a delight to see more of Jack if there is a sequel or a spinoff movie. Matthias Schweighofer has shown great potential as Jack. In his past Hollywood roles even, he was seen for a limited time on screen, but his presence added immense value to the story.

If this ending segment is anything to go by, one can assume that the Heart of Stone would continue to beat for a little longer. But even if it does not have a sequel, Heart of Stone makes a good watch for a standalone movie.

Verdict

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