'Heart of Stone' review: Gadot keeps spy flick rocking despite unsteady beat

Aug. 10—If you watched this year's debut season of "Citatel," Prime Video's flashy and expensive spy series, you'll recall it takes its name from an organization consisting of intelligence operatives who answer to no country's government, existing as the last line of defense of the great evils in the world.

Prime's 'Citadel' builds a solid foundation early on — TV review

That's basically the deal with the Charter, the spy agency at the heart of "Heart of Stone," a more-enjoyable-than-not, relatively action-packed spy flick starring Gal Gadot that debuts this week on Netflix.

Godot portrays Rachel Stone, who, on the surface, is an inexperienced tech working in an elite MI6 unit. Early in the film, as the team tries to apprehend an arms dealer who hasn't come up for air in three years, she is told by lead agent Parker (Jamie Dornan) to stay in the van as things start to get complicated.

Little do Parker and the rest of the team know she is a double agent, a highly skilled field operative for the much-whispered-about Charter with the code name Nine of Hearts.

Get out of the van Rachel does, aiming to convince her collaborators — driver and comms man Bailey (Paul Ready of "The Terror") and sharpshooter Yang (Jing Lusi, "Crazy Rich Asians"), along with Parker — that she's a fish out of water as she capably works to help them get their target. The wonder of a woman conceals her true gifts from them, communicating when she can with Jack of Hearts (Matthias Schweighöfer), the Charter's tech specialist, who offers her remote assistance as he interacts with an extremely advanced artificial intelligence and she deftly accomplishes this and that.

One person in the crowd of folks on the scene of the attempted extraction seems to recognize Rachel for what she is, the mysterious Keya Dhawan (Alia Bhatt) raising a glass to her amid all the madness.

It is immediately clear to Rachel this woman is a threat and begins to hunt for her virtually, even as her superiors instruct her to focus her efforts elsewhere. Keya, a tech prodigy who was adopted by an Indian pharma billionaire after the death of her parents, is more than happy to engage in a game of cat-and-mouse with Rachel, exchanging digital messages with her and the like.

Meanwhile, we wonder where things will go with Rachel and Parker, the latter seeming to look upon her as if she were a riddle to solve. Obviously, he's not wrong.

"Heart of Stone" is directed by Tom Harper, who helmed 2019's "The Aeronauts," as well as a few early episodes of "Peaky Blinders." He's working from a script by Greg Rucka ("The Old Guard") — who also is credited with the story — and Allison Schroeder ("Hidden Figures"), the film's production notes also mentioning "a writers' room tasked with developing unique sequences that would illuminate the storyline and its core themes."

Their collective efforts yield a strong first hour, the setup and propulsive action sequences holding the viewer's attention even as it falls short of qualifying as captivating.

Given the genre, it's not surprising that "Heart of Stone" has at least one twisty trick up its sleeve — a moment that, even if you see it coming, you probably don't see it arriving as early on as it does.

Unfortunately, as impactful as that scene is, the globetrotting adventure struggles to maintain its moment after that point.

It leans into the frenemy dynamic between Rachel and Keya, but that never quite gels due to a lack of chemistry between Gadot and Bhatt, a British actress of Indian descent who's a star in Hindi cinema.

"Heart of Stone" is stronger when Gadot shares the screen with Dornan, the "Belfast" star who always manages to be compelling on the screen — even in the silliness that is the "Fifty Shades" trilogy. Unfortunately, Parker proves to have too little dimensionality for us to be all that invested in him.

Gadot, best known for starring in the "Wonder Woman" movies and portraying the heroine in other DC Extended Universe Affairs, has the juice to keep "Heart of Stone" just engaging enough to recommend it.

One of the film's producers, David Ellison of Skydance, speaks in the aforementioned notes of making a spy movie centered around a "female character that could go toe-to-toe with the likes of Ethan Hunt and James Bond." Pleasantly, Rachel is a more believable character than those super spies — an agent who ultimately knows she can't do it all alone — but she's also not surrounded by the same level of special effects found in the movies centered around those gents.

Still, the booms and blasts of "Heart of Stone" are passable.

What's less forgivable is the movie's distracting delight in its naming conventions, Rachel working on the Hearts team of the Charter, which also, of course, has a Clubs, Diamonds and Spades unit. Each is led by one of the Four Kings — a couple of whom, by the way, are played by some notable folks — with the King of Hearts also going by "Nomad" (Sophie Okonedo, "Hotel Rwanda"). And then there's that big ol' AI, which Rachel ultimately is fighting to keep out of the wrong hands.

It is (sigh) the Heart.

In a slightly better world, the movie simply would have been called "The Charter."

Nonetheless, this world is (slightly) better off for having "Heart of Stone" in it.

'Heart of Stone'

Where: Netflix.

When: Aug. 11.

Rated: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, and some language.

Runtime: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

Stars (of four): 2.5.