Alia Bhatt has finally crossed over to Hollywood. Her move to the western world of filmmaking started with Tom Harper’s Heart of Stone, out on Netflix today. The action-thriller revolves around super-spy Agent Stone (Gal Gadot), an intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping agency, racing to stop a hacker Keya Dhawan (Alia Bhatt) from stealing its most valuable and dangerous weapon, the Heart – an artificial intelligence technology used to accomplish ‘impossible missions’.
The story is a classic: the secret organisation, which operates worldwide and is not committed to just one country, and has access to artificial intelligence – elements we recently saw in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1“, produced by the same company as Heart of Stone, Skydance.
Tom Harper has masterfully included a twist in a few pivotal moments in the story, keeping viewers on their edge. The one thing about Heart of Stone is, that it’s not boring. However, it doesn’t necessarily offer anything new either.
The film will either be loved or hated by viewers – there isn’t a lot of room for people to be on the fence about Netflix’s latest offering. Despite very well filmed and executed action sequences, primarily featuring Gal Gadot showing off her skills, the film comes across as a rehash of spy-action films we’ve seen before, many times.
Gadot and Dornan are neither terrible nor good in their action elements. Alia Bhatt’s character lacks any emotional impact and you never really connect with the big bad villain in the story.
The film is beautiful to look at, in almost every shot. The cinematography features well cut high-speed action scenes and impressive drone shots, which are complimented by a good background score.
Heart of Stone, like many films in the recent years, climaxed with an open ending, leaving room for a sequel. Watch the film on Netflix, as the runtime of the film flies quickly, even if you don’t remember much of the characters afterwards.
