Heart of Stone: Gal Gadot Stars in a Spy Thriller That's a Miss

Gal Gadot is back in a spy thriller, but this time, she's not Wonder Woman. In Heart of Stone, Gadot plays Rachel Stone, a lethal operative for a shadowy group known as the Charter. The movie is a self-conscious effort to build a spy franchise around Gadot, but it mostly thwarts her Wonderful charisma.

The movie starts with Stone undercover as a "baby agent" at Britain's MI6. She's tasked with providing intel to the hardened field operatives, but it turns out she's really a double agent for the Charter. Stone's Charter contacts include her imperious boss (Sophie Okonedo) and a skilled tech maestro (Matthias Schweighöfer) who feeds information into her ear.

All this activity of course occurs in secret from Stone's crack MI6 team, which finds itself on the tail of a skilled hacker (Alia Bhatt). The movie devolves into a somewhat convoluted game of spy v. spy v. spy while making pitstops in various international locales and letting Stone dish out considerable punishment as well as take it.

Directed by Tom Harper, Heart of Stone capitalizes on Gadot's inherent likability but doesn't bring enough distinctive elements to this exercise to make it feel like much more than a Mission: Impossible wannabe. At least Gadot's previous action-filled undertaking for Netflix, Red Notice, brought playfulness and humour to this well-worn genre. By contrast, even the most notable bits here – one set on and around a blimp comes to mind – hardly seem to justify consuming the whole thing.

Granted, nobody has a monopoly on this kind of thriller, and Gadot makes a striking protagonist even when she's not Wonder Woman. Yet the structure of Heart of Stone doesn't help by beginning in the middle and providing little in the way of backstory to separate Stone from any number of other cinematic spies.

Ultimately, Heart of Stone comes across as yet another movie stitched together from parts of others. By that measure, even if its heart is in the right place, it's the other pieces that feel a bit out of whack.

Some viewers may enjoy Heart of Stone for its action sequences and Gadot's performance. However, others may find the movie to be too convoluted and derivative. Ultimately, it's up to each individual viewer to decide whether or not they enjoy Heart of Stone.