BEFORE: I've fallen behind a bit on my blogging, usually I like to start a movie the night before so I can get the blog posted on the day it's due - but I gave myself a day off right before St. Patrick's Day, and since then I've been trying to catch up - so I'd love to start watching my Thursday film on Wednesday night so I can post the review on Thursday, but right now I'm watching the film on Thursday night and that means I have to post on Friday, and late on Friday at that. In order to catch up I'll either need to watch three films in a 24-hour period, or just skip a day completely, which would be much easier. The problem is, I can't do that until after Easter, I stupidly booked myself solid so there's no chance to give myself a day off, not for a while anyway. I could try to catch up this weekend, but I have this weekend job on Sunday so that's a no-go. Really, with 300 films and 365 days in a year, I should give myself more free days now, then there will be less of a break come December. OK, first week of April, I'm going to take a couple days off before I watch "Oppenheimer".
Archie Madekwe carries over from "Saltburn".
THE PLOT: An intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping agency races to stop a hacker from stealing its most valuable and dangerous weapon.
AFTER: It's too bad, I realized too late that this film shares an actor with both "A Haunting in Venice" (Jamie Dornan) and "Oppenheimer" (Matthias Schweighofer) - but really, what film DOESN'T share an actor with "Oppenheimer"? So I could have watched this one between those two films in the first week of April - that really would have helped me catch up now, if only I'd realized it in time. It's too late now, I already watched the film, and I can't get that time back.
Generally, that's the feeling I'm left with on "Heart of Stone", that it represents two hours of my life that I won't get back. It's a shame because this one started out as very promising, with the idea that within every major intelligence operation on the planet, there are double-agents embedded, ones who are also working for a shadow organization called "The Charter", and are there to promote a shared positive agenda for the world, to save more lives as a whole, and that's apparently not something that organizations like MI-6 or the CIA have as goals, necessarily. It seemed like a good premise, it hooked me with that - so Gal Gadot plays Rachel Stone, who just works as a hacker and intelligence person for MI-6, but she's also got real spy skills that she keeps secret, and when her other boss gives her orders, she's in a position to do things that save lives, possibly the lives of MI-6 agents, or possibly civilians.
Maybe it's because I've been in this position, sort of - I work for two companies whose interests sometimes dovetail - sure, working at a movie theater is hardly the same as being a spy, but I've been at the same location sometimes as an employee and sometimes as a client, like when my animator boss screens something at the theater, as part of a school event, then I could be there as a guest of a guest, and work the merch table. That's kind of how I got the job at the theater in the first place, working at the events where my other boss's films were screened, and then when I saw a job opening for a manager the theater, I had that lightbulb moment where I said, "Sure, I could do that job, in fact I have done that job several times."
So in the opening sequence here where Rachel is called into action during an extraction operation at a ski resort, her fellow MI-6 agents only need her to be the "person in the chair", giving instructions remotely to the agents from the van parked outside. But a complication in the plan means she's got to go inside, in order to get close enough to hack their system, they're very concerned for her because they think she has no field experience, which is NOT the case, she's a fully-trained agent, just one working for a different organization. She's basically been hiding in plain sight, and once she's left the van, she works behind the scenes to take the enemies out so that MI-6 can complete their mission, because this result lines up with the wishes of the other organization. It's at least interesting that there are plans within plans.
But it also means that MI-6 isn't being thorough enough with their background checks, maybe, because if one agent can be working for another agency with good intentions, it means there could be another agent who's working for another agency with evil intentions, and that turns out to be the case. That agent has been desperately seeking information about The Charter, because it uses an incredibly powerful probability calculator called The Heart, essentially an A.I. device that powers everything they do to bring about a positive change to the world. But this is where the story kind of falls apart, because such a device, something that can calculate anything, hack anything, break any code and make planes fall out of the sky, for example, is nearly impossible to imagine and almost certainly will never exist. Also, I saw similar devices used as macguffins in TWO different schlocky Bruce Willis movies a couple of years ago.
This is where things get ridiculous, because The Charter doesn't store this super-computing nexus device on-site, or even in a vault, they store it in a dirigible that's floating over Africa, supposedly where nobody would ever look for it, except then of course the bad guys do a hack and learn exactly where it is, so then it turns out that was a terrible place to put it, wasn't it? Also, the dirigible has hydrogen in it instead of helium, so apparently nobody learned ANYTHING from the Hindenburg disaster, and also you can probably guess what happens to the dirigible, can't you?
Ugh, it's kind of downhill from there, because the coolest thing about the charter was that every agent was identified by a playing card, and there were four sections to the organization, based on the four suits, but then once the bad guys have the device then the King of Spades and the King of Diamonds are taken out, and the King of Clubs has to sacrifice himself just to give the King of Hearts a chance to come out on top. This could have been the next franchise like "Kingman", which named its operatives after the Knights of Camelot, but come on, that knights thing is way cooler than just naming people after playing cards.
It's really hot right now to talk about the downsides of A.I., but I honestly don't think it's going to bring about the creation of SkyNet. I don't think software that allows high schoolers to cheat on their homework is going to bring about the downfall of civilization, not when the software can't even get the number of fingers on a human hand right when it generates images (or the number of arms, or legs, or whatever.). We might need software that can create photos on demand, or has the ability to write better movie plots than this one, it shouldn't be too hard.
As silly as it was, though, I will say that if they'd used this storyline for "Wonder Woman 1984", with Diana Prince going undercover in MI-6, it would have been far superior to the storyline that they landed on for that film. "Heart of Stone" may be bad, but it's not "Wonder Woman 1984" bad, I'm still having nightmares about that one.
Also starring Gal Gadot (last seen in "The Flash"), Jamie Dornan (last seen in "Belfast"), Sophie Okonedo (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Matthias Schweighofer (last seen in "Resistance"), Paul Ready (last seen in "The Dig"), Jing Lusi (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), BD Wong (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Alia Bhatt, Enzo Cilenti (last seen in "Juliet, Naked"), Jon Kortajarena (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga"), Glenn Close (last seen in "Something Borrowed"), Mark Ivanir (last seen in "Kajllionaire"), Joe Reisig (last seen in "Justice League"), Luca Fiamenghi, Thomas Arnold (last seen in "Far from the Madding Crowd"), Ruth Keeling, Neran Persaud, Uriel Emil (last seen in "The Bourne Ultimatum"), Lanre Malaolu, Ndoye Bigue, Allan Hyde, Anna Andresen, Jonas Alfreo Birkisson, Joanne Elizabeth, Beatrix Rose Bagnall
RATING: 4 out of 10 blackjack chips
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