‘Heart of Stone’ Review: Gal Gadot Plays a Rogue Agent in a Joyless Thriller That’s All Rote Logistics
11.08.2023 - 01:15
/ variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic We all know what a MacGuffin is (and in case you don’t, here’s what it is): an object or event that the plot of a thriller hinges on, and which everyone onscreen keeps talking about, yet it has no intrinsic interest apart from how it serves the structure of the movie. The term was mythologized by Hitchcock, and as shorthand for the way a certain kind of movie works it has never gone out of style. But what do you call a MacGuffin that’s so boring the audience can’t pretend to care about it? Let’s call it a MacMuffin.
“Heart of Stone,” a double-crossing espionage thriller that is joyless, convoluted, and sludgy-looking — in short, abysmal — is a movie chockful of MacMuffins. Gal Gadot, working hard to come off as blithe and cool (something one should never work hard to do), plays Rachel Stone, an intelligence operative who is part of a chummy veteran spy team that works for Britain’s MI6. She’s the group’s token geek, a tech wizard who never goes out in the field.
Except that as we learn, that’s all a ruse. Rachel is a counteragent, a spy among spies. She’s actually a member of the Charter, an international group of agents who have bonded together — with allegiance to no country — to make the world a safer place.
We see her interact with other members of the Charter, yet the outfit is really the film’s first MacMuffin. We never have any idea of what they’re up to, how they operate, or where they fit into the global nexus. They’re just a utilitarian thriller abstraction.
Rachel isn’t the only member of her MI6 team who’s fooling everyone. So is Parker (Jamie Dornan), a charmer who flirts with Rachel — but that’s mostly an act, since he’s got his own agenda. It revolves around trying to get
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