Picture this: An undercover agent conceals her identity and works in an undercover secret intelligence agency as an IT professional. The moment her team screws up, she springs into action, covering up the mess they created. Leading a Hannah Montana-like double life, Gal Gadot plays Rachel Stone who is just as good at hand-to-hand combat as hacking phones. Like the Clark Kent-Superman trope, she is an IT girl who, in her own words, “hides in the toilet” during shootouts but in reality, she is usually hunting down the enemy.
Despite being an action spy thriller, Netflix’s Heart of Stone subverts the genre by showing just how incapable the white men in charge of MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6), CIA and other intelligence agencies are. The agencies are much glorified in Mission Impossible, Bourne Identity and other action franchises. Director Tom Harper, as the perfect antidote to MI6 fatigue, introduces the Charters — a group of ex-intelligence operatives with no political leanings or national allegiance. They keep peace by putting out fires they didn’t start.
Stone, who is a part of the Charter, is secretly pretending to be a part of MI6. Her team members often mock her for being in the van most of the time — hacking servers remotely, bypassing firewalls and facial recognition. She often saves the day by helping her team led by Parker (Jamie Dornan), the white man who takes away the credit for her work.
As fate would have it, Stone’s cover is blown sooner than expected. She loses two of her teammates Theresa Yang (Jing Lusi) and Max Bailey (Paul Ready) in an intense shootout in Portugal where Parker reveals himself to be the antagonist. We are told about “Heart”, a quantum supercomputer which can predict the future and hack into the most protected systems in the world.
Parker plans on stealing the Heart from the Charter as a revenge for leaving him to die in the middle of a warzone. He is aided by Keya Dhawan (Alia Bhatt, in her debut Hollywood role) in this pursuit. In the first half of the film, Keya is pitched as a formidable figure who lurks in the shadows, hacking phones and outsmarting Stone every time.
Keya is also given a backstory — her parents were used as lab rats for a scientific trial by an Indian billionaire. She wants to seize the Heart and exact revenge on the tycoon by revealing damning evidence against him to the public. As an Indian who is familiar with Bhatt’s filmography, at first, you’ll breathe a sigh of relief learning about Keya — she has a significant character to play, and has a backstory, too.
The track record of Indian actors making cameo or guest appearances in major film franchises hasn't been the best — case in point Anil Kapoor in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), Priyanka Chopra in Spy Kids franchise spin-off (We Can Be Heroes, 2020). On the face of it, Alia’s role in Heart of Stone seemed crucial to the film.
The feeling, however, is short-lived. In a twist, Parker is revealed as the chief antagonist. Keya is essentially his aide whose job is to help him with the tech-related stuff. In a scene shot in the Senegalese desert, Keya holds Stone at gunpoint. Without much effort, Stone disarms Keya.
Alia, especially in the scenes she appears with Gadot, looks lost. In a telling moment, Stone tells Keya “you’re a child”, and I couldn’t help but nod in agreement. The blame here is not as much on Alia who has played her role to perfection but on the writers who did give the actress a meaty role but ended up downplaying her — it is almost unbelievable that Keya is the same woman who hacked into the MI6 system while looking Stone in the eye.
Granted, Keya's character is meant to be a red herring. The twist where Parker turns out to be the antagonist works but at Keya’s cost who doesn’t hold her ground before Gadot. Both established actresses in their own right, Gadot and Bhatt needn’t be pitted against each other. But must one get all the meaty lines and the other look subservient?
In the grand scheme of things. Keya’s role in the film is important — she helps Stone retrieve the Heart in an intense fight. The two actresses join forces to fight Parker which is clearly meant to drive home the “women supporting women” narrative. But pitching Keya as a formidable character only for her to turn out to be an IT expert stings — especially as an admirer of Bhatt’s incredible filmography back home.
The central conflict in Heart of Stone is between computing algorithms and human instincts. Screenplay writers Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder address the conflict strictly on the surface level and don't really explore it to its full potential. The most we get is a scene where Nomad (Sophie Okonedo) uses a '90s landline phone to connect with Rachel.
Heart of Stone only scratches the surface of the human dilemma it claims to explore. While the film is subversive, it pales in comparison to Extraction 2, which was released on the same platform a couple months back. The Russo brothers weren't trying to be cerebral or drive home a point — the Chris Hemsworth-starrer was meant to be a brainless action film which didn’t ask hard-hitting questions — which is exactly what worked in its favour. Heart of Stone manages to do neither properly.
Heart of Stone makes a strong case for living an old school life guided by gut instincts, and humanity rather than going for Artificial Intelligence, even if it can predict the future with 100 percent accuracy. The film should have followed its own advice and relied less on CGI for action and more on meticulously choreographed action sequences. On the rare occasion where it does rely on hand-to-hand combat (case in point: the shootout and car chase in Portugal), the viewing experience is much better.
While the premise of Heart of Stone is quite strong, it doesn’t ace the execution and leaves much to be desired. Gadot however, who has proven herself to be one of the most bankable action stars since DC’s Wonder Woman franchise, is on top of her game in the film. Heart of Stone deserves a watch for this reason alone.
Heart of Stone is streaming now on Netflix.
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