Netflixable? Gal G. goes Super Secret Agent in “Heart of Stone”

Another month, another bloated but watchable big bang of a Netflix action movie.

Gal Gadot stars in “Heart of Stone,” a sort of “Kingsmen” riff on all-knowing/all-powerful off-the-books secret agents and their secret agency menaced by even more secretive evil agents and their evil agency.

It’s dumb, but watchable. It’s got a crackling car chase, servicable fights and an epic pair of aerial effects scenes that would do James Bond proud.

Dumb how? Inane dialogue that’s meant to be pithy and punchy.

“Three vehicles, lots of guns.

“Yeah, I could tell from all the bullets!”

“Are you trying to KILL us?”

“Pretty much the opposite, actually.”

Gadot is an MI6 operative, a hacker whose job it is to stay “in the van,” gaining access, hacking phones, opening doors and directing the “agents.” But with a notoriously murderous arms dealer about to escape the mountaintop Alpine casino (How very…Bond.), she doesn’t.

Her team (Jamie Dornan, Jing Luis and Paul Ready) may be in the dark, but it turns out “Stone” is a mole, code-named Nine of Hearts. Her “real” control is the mysterious Jack of Hearts (Matthias Schweighöfer) and her real “boss” is Nomad, the King of Hearts (Sophie Okonedo).

The Charter is a multi-national NGO — an agency led by ex-spies of many nations and run on the probabilities, predictions, paths set up and missions hacked and arranged by an all-seeing/all-knowing computer, “the closest mankind has to perfect intelligence.”

It’s called “The Heart.” And it isn’t anywhere anyone can get at it. Or so they think, until others come for it. There’s a newer, younger hacker (Alia Bhatt) toying with her elders.

That on-the-nose title sets up bad puns, which aren’t played for laughs.

“So I should have listened to ‘The Heart.'”

Well, ugh.

But the chases, brawls and Bondian set-pieces keep this blundering-on-past-its-payoff thriller on the move and perfectly watchable, even if we wince every couple of minutes at the outlandish tech, the over-the-top villainy and the “Bugs Bunny Physics” of impossible stunts.

And Gadot and her stunt team make a willowy, reasonably believable runway-ready heroine “super” in all but name.

There’s not much heart (ahem) to any of this, and most of the twists are hackneyed and predictable. But in the world of overlong, under-edited made-for-Netflix action, it’s on a par with the “Extraction(s),” “Hidden Strike,” “Spiderhead” and “Ava” films the streamer trots out, pretty much one per month.

Rating: PG-13, violence and lots of it

Cast: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Sophie Okonedo, Jing Lusi, Alia Bhatt, Matthias Schweighöfer and Glenn Close.

Credits: Directed by Tom Harper, scripted by Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:03

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
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