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.
There has never been a sports drama with this level of adversity. Set against a background of war-torn Syria, “The Swimmers,” now streaming on Netflix, tells the incredible and true story of Yusra and Sara Mardini, sisters who fled Damascus to find a new life and a chance at competing in the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics.
The harrowing story of survival, that includes a dangerous voyage in a small lifeboat packed with refugees across the Mediterranean Sea, is inspiring, even if it gives into to its more conventional nature in the third act.
The story begins with a tightly knit family living in Damascus as the Syrian civil war brews around them. Father Ezzat (Ali Suliman), once a professional swimmer, has passed his love of the sport to his daughters Sara (Manal Issa) and Yusra (Nathalie Issa). Both have talent, but Yusra has the drive to be a champion. Both sisters dream of competing in the Olympics, but the ever-escalating war makes that goal unattainable.
After a bomb lands too-close-for-comfort, the sisters make the difficult decision to leave behind the only life they’ve ever known and seek asylum in Germany. Accompanied by their cousin Nizar (Ahmed Malek) they begin a perilous journey that will hopefully lead to the Olympics.
The sisters’ story is, by turns, heartwarming, suspenseful and traumatic. It becomes more of a traditional sports movie, à la “Rocky,” near the end, but until that point director Sally El-Hosaini tells the true story of resilience with sensitivity and visual aplomb.
Unforgettable shots of a bomb landing in a swimming pool or a beach, littered with tens-of-thousands of discarded lifejackets left behind by migrants on their way to a new future, speak loudly to a worldwide refugee crisis and are worth the price of admission.
“Army of Thieves,” a new heist film now streaming on Netflix, is a prequel to Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” from earlier this year but do not expect the same kind of blood and guts zombiefied action.
The new film takes place six years before the zombie outbreak that brought Las Vegas to its knees in “Army of the Dead.” Both are heist movies, but the only brain eaters on display in this European-set flick are on the news and in the main character, Ludwig Dieter’s (Matthias Schweighöfer, who also directs) dreams. This is a standalone movie, the origin story of the safecracker who provided most of the lighter moments in Snyder’s film.
When we first meet Ludwig he’s a safecracker nerd, making YouTube video (that nobody watches) about the art of breaking into safes. He’s a skilled practitioner of the craft, but he’s an innocent and has never stolen anything from anyone. His job at a bank is unsatisfying in the extreme, so when a YouTube commenter invites him a safecracking competition, he readily accepts.
There, he proves his mettle and is recruited by bank robber Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel) to join her gang of criminals, Korina (Ruby O. Fee), hacker Rolph (Guz Khan) and the muscle with the action hero name, Brad Cage (Stuart Martin). The gang has ambitious plans to rob three next-to-impossible safes, the kind that only Ludwig can crack, while the zombie outbreak in the United States is causing instability.
But what will bring the gang down first, zombies, sexual tension, Interpol or in-fighting?
The only real connection “Army of Thieves” has with “Army of the Dead” is Ludwig. It’s his introduction to the Snyderverse and dovetails into the zombie movie. Other than that, they are two separate things.
This one has a lighter touch, there’s some romance and no brain eating.
It plays like a riff on “Ocean’s Eleven.” At two hours it feels slightly long but Schweighöfer is an agreeable presence, adept at the character’s slapstick as well as the conveying the passion for his love interest (no spoilers here!). The result is an unexpectedly fun, action-packed movie gives new life to “Army of the Dead’s” most interesting character.
Richard Crouse makes a Corpse Reviver Number 2, the perfect cocktail to enjoy while having a drink and a think about “Army of the Dead,” the new zombie movie from director Zach Snyder.
Richard joins Ryan Doyle and Jay Michaels of the NewsTalk 1010 afternoon show to talk about the history of the Screwdriver cocktail. Not just for brunch, it actually dates back to Turkey in the 1940s. We have a look at the Netflix zombie-palooza “Army of the Dead,” and ask out loud the question that everyone is thinking: Why can movie theatres be safely opened in Quebec, but not Ontario.
A riff on Daniel Defoe’s classic tale of survival “Robinson Crusoe,” a new animated film, “The Wild Life,” tells the story from a different point of view. Instead of the human perspective this 3D action adventure tells the tale from the point of view of the animals who play host to their ship wrecked visitor.
The film’s narrator is a bright red parrot named Mak (voice of David Howard). He let’s us know that life B.C.—Before Crusoe—was boring. His little island is a paradise but everyday was essentially the same until the shipwreck. When the dorky Crusoe (Matthias Schweighöfer) washes up on shore it changes everything for the chatty Mak, a tapir named Rosie (Ilka Bessin), Kiki the kingfisher (Melanie Hinze) and all their friends. “The New World was finally here,” says Mak,” and I had no Idea if I was ready for it or not.” After a rocky start—at the first the animals think the man is a sea monster—they becomes friends, bonded in their efforts to save their home from an invasion by some savage felines.
No animals were harmed during the filming of this movie, it’s an animated film after all, but there is some cruelty to the audience. If Mak found life on the island boring I wonder what he might have thought about this movie. The animation will entertain the eye of the six-and-under set but lacklustre characters and story may not grab their attention. There are some good messages here about the benefits of co-operation and loyalty but the story feels padded with needless action and, worse, pointless exposition. This is the kind of movie where characters helpfully describe everything you’ve just seen, treating kids like they are too stupid to process the action on the screen for themselves.
As for the characters, there isn’t much to say. They are standard direct-to-DVD animal cuties with nothing much to differentiate them from one another except their accents, which brings up another question. Closed off from the rest of civilization—they think Robinson Crusoe comes from another world—these creatures have grown up together and yet they all have different accents as if they hailed from different parts of the planet. It’s a small thing, but it’s also the kind of character detail more careful creators would have noticed.
“The Wild Life” isn’t a travesty, some small ones may find delight with the cute hedgehogs and company, but it is lazy. Like NWave Pictures’s previous pictures, “Fly Me to the Moon” and “The House of Magic,” “The Wild Life” lacks the narrative richness of similar work by Pixar and Dreamworks.
