Richard Crouse

The 2023 worry-of-the-week, that Artificial Intelligence is too powerful, that it will soon be controlling our lives, is kicked up a notch or two in “Heart of Stone,” the new Gal Gadot high tech thriller now streaming on Netflix.

Gadot is Rachel Stone, a computer tech/operative for a super-secret peacekeeping group called The Charter. “When governments fail, the only thing left is the Charter.” They are a specialized unit of “the most highly trained agents with no political leanings, no national allegiances, working together to keep peace in a turbulent world.”

Helping them to police humanity is a powerful AI program called the Heart. “If you own the Heart,” says MI6 agent Parker (Jamie Dornan), “you own the world.” It’s a vital organ, the most advanced AI program on earth, capable of scrutinizing and evaluating all human data, finding patterns and using those results to make predictions of future global threats. “The Heart is knowledge and power. It can crash a market or drop a plane out of the sky. Who needs to steal a nuclear bomb when you can control them all?” says Parker.

In the wrong hands a program that formidable, with the totality of human knowledge, could destabilize the world, which is exactly what mastermind hacker Keya Dhawan (Bollywood superstar Alia Bhatt) has in mind. “Now you will answer to me,” she taunts like a good movie villain should.

Cue the globetrotting mission to stop Dhawan from stealing the Charter’s Heart.

Directed by Tom “Peaky Blinders” Harper, “Heart of Stone” is a big, slick story of international intrigue that works best when it is in motion. When Godot is flying through the air on a skidoo or going one-on-one with the baddies, it zips along like a 90s era 007 movie. That means, loads of high-tech nonsense, flamboyant characters, a dastardly villain, international intrigue, a propulsive soundtrack and, of course, outlandish action.

But when the characters speak, and they speak quite a lot, the 007ness of it all reduces to a jumble of b-movie spy clichés. It looks good, but speaks in the language of truisms. In other words, been there, done that.

Cinematographer George Steel shoots for the big screen, and has an eye for action. The location work—including the now obligatory chase scene through the cobble streets of a European city—gives the movie an up-market sheen, but don’t be fooled, this is an expensive knockoff, a Canal Street copy of other, better spy movies.

“Heart of Stone” did not warm my heart.