Heart of Stone (2023)

[Greg]

Gal Gadot plays a spy infiltrating a spy organization to catch other spies. Sort of. Kind of. I'm sick of the private security firm genre and this movie does it no favors. And yet, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. But it was still pretty bad. The Queen gave up half way through. There were some good action sequences but the plot just became tiresome after a while. There were some good plot changes but those came early on. Lots of cool stunts that were logically dumb as hell.

And Glen Close is in this for about a second.

[Drunk Monk]

I found it amusing as a typical special agent thriller with the twist being the agent was female. The action was good and it moved along well enough. 

Logically dumb stunts? Sure. But it’s dumb to apply logic to this genre nowadays. We’re decades past clever human spies and into the era of superheroes. 

Gal came off a little flat. She had some great lines but they didn’t hit well, something about her timing wasn’t working. Perhaps it’s a mistake to deploy Gal and not exploit her sexiness. The humor of the situations just didn’t play out for some odd reason. There were plenty of clever quips, but again, that timing fell short.

I knew who the double-crosser was long before that happened because it played out such a common sly cliche. I did not expect that reveal to affect the team they say it did. 

It was a good vehicle for Alia to begin penetrating Hollywood. She was in RRR, and when it looked like it might become a spy buddy flick, I was encouraged. Maybe it’ll go that way if there’s a sequel. I did like the world of the Charter and the playing card motif. I’d probably watch a sequel.

Not particularly D00M recommended or denied. Watch it if you’re curious. There are worse ways to spend 2 hours (there are better ways too).

[King Bob]

Speaking of superheroes, I saw a graph that indicated revenue for superhero movies peaked a few years ago.