Netflix has an amazing propensity to produce truly formulaic, mediocre movies. I know I have said this before, but it is again remarkable how finely tuned they have nailed their algorithm to completely avoid anything outside the center. Incredibly few artistic risks are taken, if any, in any of their self-made pile of original films. In fact, if any such risks do exist, it's almost certainly due to a director managing to sneak one by them.
It's obvious WHY they do it - their motivations are pure profit, and so they must balance the ledger; they hire big stars to get viewers, and want nothing to risk that, and feel anything else is money misspent. They ensure that no movies they release are a 1/10 or 2/10, congratulations to them. They also ensure, by the same process, that no movie can ever come out of their process that is a 9/10 or 10/10 either (or really even an 8). It is so antithetical to the very idea of art. Sometimes one of these films is particularly well done and punches above its grade, but that only ever results in a 6/10 or maybe 7 if we're being generous. Of course, it really isn't Art, it is Content, as all of you well-trained children of the web know. I am probably preaching to the choir, and certainly I'm not saying anything new, but sometimes it just makes me feel a little sad.
Anyway, this one is their idea of Mission: Impossible, the film it is unmistakably mimicking. But it does it all wrong, as you might expect, focusing on things I don't care about (members of the "team" that you've never had any chance to care about, for instance; massive overly-high dumb stakes; big action sequences that don't really make sense). It's part of the modern tradition of the Spy Movie As Action Movie, I guess.
One of my least favorite things that particular subgenre does is use technology so advanced that it is functionally omnipotent and might as well be magic. You don't have to do this! Please stop! A movie like The Bourne Identity works so well largely because it is so grounded in reality, and these movies are so far from that. You can already do cool things with lower stakes and technology that is maybe a little more advanced than current tech but also still slightly plausible.
It does also pull out one of the current age of cinema's absolute favorites: the villain who is actually correct (in this case, that everyone holding the reigns of power is using it exclusively to maintain the status quo that benefits them), and so must do some egregiously pointlessly evil things that don't advance his cause, just to remind you how bad he is.
In the end, it is what it is: another Netflix Movie that will be passably entertaining as you watch it and completely forgotten within 10 minutes of the credits.
Score: 4/10
IMDb: Heart of Stone
PS: Secondary poster chosen because Gal Gadot is a Zionist and so I don't feel like displaying her at the center, as she is in all the others. Congratulations to Alia Bhatt. Hope you aren't one too but I don't know anything about you! At least one of the few nice things the Netflix formula continues to do is use random actors like this who are lesser known (at least to American audiences) around their star in big roles.
PPS: Was this movie trying to make some dumb/weird minor point about AI? Maybe? I can't even tell because it was so poorly executed. And you won't be able to tell me because you'll never watch it.
