377: Heart of Stone

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, it's Henry with the Film Buds Podcast. Please make sure to rate, review,

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[00:00:11] 85. Let's get to Heart of Stone, which is a Netflix original came out I think late in

[00:00:19] 2023. It is directed by Tom Harper, stars Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Aaliyah Botts, Jane

[00:00:27] Lucy, Paul Reddy, Enzo Calente, Matthias Schweighofer, I can never say that name right, and a few

[00:00:36] others. And the synopsis is, an intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping

[00:00:42] agency races to stop a hacker from stealing its most valuable and dangerous weapon.

[00:00:48] So I had heard about this one when it came out, didn't have a huge interest in seeing

[00:00:54] it mainly because it seemed kind of generic. And I love Gal Gadot across the board, I like

[00:01:00] Jamie Dornan, everybody in it I enjoy so that wasn't really an issue. But I didn't hear

[00:01:05] great reviews about it and it seemed like a fairly standard Netflix original movie where,

[00:01:11] and I think I'm right in this case, where if this had been released in theaters it would

[00:01:16] have flopped horribly. And I don't think I would have even seen it in theaters. But

[00:01:22] now, smartly so, I think Netflix and other streaming services have a good marketing

[00:01:28] sense where they're like, alright, this movie is probably only going to do well viewership

[00:01:34] wise on a streaming service. So let's get it or let's produce it and maybe it'll be

[00:01:41] a hit. And I think it did at least decently well when it was released. I do think though,

[00:01:47] well I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes it out to be. It's definitely nothing

[00:01:51] amazing, nothing I would ever feel the need to watch again or highly recommend. I think

[00:01:56] it's passable, like it doesn't do anything offensively wrong. It's paced well, it's not

[00:02:01] too long, the action and locations are varied, there's a lot of changing of going from place

[00:02:08] to place and all that like you would expect. I really like Gal Gadot as an action star,

[00:02:13] she's good, Jamie Dornan is excellent. And I think they do a good job of building up

[00:02:18] those partnerships and friendships within the organization. I think all that worked.

[00:02:25] The biggest issue though, which detracts from the whole thing and brings it way down is there

[00:02:31] is nothing really original in it. Like the whole supercomputer thing that can hack into

[00:02:37] any system in the world, how many times have we seen that? Like I get that we're in the

[00:02:41] world of AI and computers getting more and more advanced but at least when talking about

[00:02:48] spy espionage movies, we've seen that too many times to really care, at least for me,

[00:02:55] about that very much or to find that really inventive. So the overall plot, nothing to

[00:03:00] write home about, didn't really care much about that at all. So it was really the action,

[00:03:05] the visuals, the performances that would keep me going. And so I think that for what it is,

[00:03:11] you could do worse. I know some people really trashed it, which I get, but for me it passed

[00:03:17] the time. I was at least marginally interested to see what would happen next. I thought the

[00:03:24] sequence in Senegal, I believe it is out in the desert, I really like that. The final

[00:03:30] sequence in Iceland is good. I think the opening action sequence in, I think it's Austria?

[00:03:37] Whatever some sort of snowy mountain resort type place, I think that's well done. Probably

[00:03:44] the only new-ish thing, not to say it's that new, but the only thing I really found, oh

[00:03:48] that's kind of cool, is the automatically tracked systems that they have. Like when

[00:03:55] she's on the parachute and it's guiding her through the mountains, I thought that was

[00:04:00] interesting and somewhat refreshing I guess. If they do another one, I feel like they

[00:04:05] easily could. I'd watch it I guess at some point, but I feel like, eh. I only watched

[00:04:11] it maybe two days ago and it's already pretty much out of my brain. There are a lot better

[00:04:16] ones out there for sure. Oh, and actually one thing, the biggest issue besides the plot

[00:04:24] is the script. The dialogue is so generic. Anytime they're on a mission and they're

[00:04:33] communicating over comms and stuff like that, it's just so bland. In the day and age where

[00:04:40] we have great spy movies like James Bond, Mission Impossible, and similar ones, anytime

[00:04:48] there's not really creative action. Which I mean the action, as I said, there are a

[00:04:52] couple moments where I was like, that's kind of cool, but not much more than that. But

[00:04:56] going back, when we have films like that that have just come out, even in the last couple

[00:05:00] of months, there's no real comparison in a variety of ways. And this is produced I think

[00:05:05] by the Dead Reckoning producers, and it is done by the guy who directed The Aeronauts

[00:05:10] with Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. Which I thought was alright, nothing amazing, but

[00:05:15] I think I like that one more than this one. So check it out, won't blow you away I bet,

[00:05:21] but it is what it is. That is a light two and a half out of five.