Gal Gadot trades in Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth for an entire black bag of dirty tricks in a gritty new spy thriller. Heart of Stone has arrived in New Zealand and is now streaming on Netflix.
Directed by Tom Harper and written by Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder, from a story by the former, Heart of Stone sees Gadot play Rachel Stone, an intelligence operative (that’s “spy” for the man on the street) who lives by the edict “no friends, no relationships.” Which means she will probably prove hard to live by over the course of the film. Her latest mission from international peacekeeping operation Charter is to protect a mysterious MacGuffin known as “The Heart” and prevent it from falling into enemy hands. And we’re off and running.
It’s all a bit vague at this point, TBH. The MacGuffin puts us in the mind of whatever the hell Tom’s chasing in any given Mission: Impossible movie, while the non-partisan spy agency recalls everything from Kingsman: The Secret Service to Amazon’s Citadel (uh oh).
But we do know that it’s being billed as a gritty, globe-trotting action thriller tailored for Gadot. Writer Greg Rucka, an old comics scribe, has plenty of form for that genre. He also wrote Wonder Woman for a while, which is a fun coincidence.
Gadot is joined by Bollywood star Alia Bhatt and Game of Thrones veteran Jamie Dornan, with Matthias Schweighöfer (Army of the Dead), Sophie Okonedo (Death on the Nile), Jing Lusi (Crazy Rich Asians), Paul Ready (The Terror), Jon Kortajarena (A Single Man), and Archie Madekwe (Gran Turismo) in support.
We’ve certainly had a veritable slew of tense espionage thrillers of late, on screens big and small, so surely one more couldn’t hurt. Will it be any good? We’re quietly hopeful.
