Heart of Stone: Sinks just like one

Heart of Stone (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for action violence and brief profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

An original thought would die of loneliness in this film’s derivative script.

 

Gal Gadot can’t be blamed for wanting to strike while her star wattage is bright, but she should choose her projects more carefully. 

 

The calm before the storm: This seasoned MI6 team — from left, Bailey (Paul Ready),
Rachel (Gal Gadot), Parker (Jamie Dornan) and Yang (Jing Lusi) — will encounter
serious trouble after arriving in Lisbon.

I’ve also long been wary of poor title credits, as it’s almost always a sign of equally bad things to come … and this film has truly terrible opening credits.

In fairness, it’s not the worst way to spend two hours, for undiscriminating fans of kick-ass spyjinks. But scripters Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder begged, borrowed or stole everything here from superior predecessors … and director Tom Harper’s over-reliance on sub-par CGI doesn’t help.

 

Gadot stars as Rachel Stone, the “mousy” tech member of an MI6 team that includes experienced agents Parker (Jamie Dornan), Yang (Jing Lusi) and Bailey (Paul Ready). They’re introduced during a mission taking place at a ski resort atop a mountain in Italy’s Alpin Arena Senales, tasked with “extracting” Mulvaney (Enzo Cilenti), “Europe’s most wanted arms dealer,” who has surfaced for the first time in three years.

 

Careful planning goes slightly awry, so Rachel is forced to improvise in the field — much to her colleagues’ concern — by getting close enough to clone a baddie’s cell phone. Then things really go wrong, due to the intervention of a mysterious young woman (Alia Bhatt) who is following a different agenda.

 

Rachel therefore is forced to display her true talents as a seasoned member of The Charter, code-named Nine of Hearts: a hyper-capable agent embedded in this team without the knowledge of anybody in MI6. She saves the day — while taking care not to be seen doing so, by her three colleagues — thanks to off-site assistance by Jack of Hearts (Matthias Schweighöfer) and “The Heart,” an immersive, quantum computer AI interface capable of split-second judgment calls based on the highest probability of success.

 

Think Waze or any other satellite navigation system on steroids, able to alert Rachel to human hazards, in addition to feeding her geographical telemetry via special goggles. Suddenly need a snow bike or parachute? The Heart will guide Rachel appropriately.

 

The Charter, divided into four teams code-named for the 52 cards in a deck, is an off-books organization whose agents clandestinely step in “where governments fail.” (That’s a phrase we’ve heard before.)

 

The fact that Rachel has concealed her actual talents for four years — particularly from Parker, Yang and Bailey — seems a bit of a stretch, but we gotta roll with it. The greater good is paramount, as the King of Hearts (Sophie Okonedo) stiffly informs Rachel, during a subsequent de-briefing (a lecture we’ve also heard many times before).

The Swimmers: Medal-worthy

The Swimmers (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, occasionaly profanity, violence and sexual assault

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.9.22

Some people are born with a level of grit, determination, strength and focus that the rest of us can’t even comprehend, let alone emulate.

 

Following railroad tracks to their next destination, and mindful of avoiding soldiers who
would arrest them — or worse — this small group of refugees hopes for the best:
from left, in foreground, Bilal (Elmi Rashid Elmi), Sara (Nathalie Issa), Shada
(Nahel Tzegai, with infant), Yusra (Manal Issa) and Emad (James Krishna Floyd).

Director Sally El Hosaini’s depiction of what Syrian sisters Sara and Yusra Mardini endured, while pursuing their version of the impossible dream, is compelling and impressively inspirational. El Hosaini and co-scripter Jack Thorne had no need to lard actual events with fictionalized melodramatic touches; the truth — adapted from Yusra Mardini’s 2018 autobiography, Butterfly: From Refugee to Olympian — is sufficiently astonishing.

This is one of the rare films that can change hearts and minds, by compartmentalizing a real-world crisis: in this case, the massive refugee crisis that resulted when the 2011 Arab Spring protests ultimately prompted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to brutally crack down on his own citizens.

 

This saga follows that war’s impact on one family, along with some key sidebar relatives and friends.

 

Events begin quietly during Yusra’s 13th birthday party, a cheerfully lively event orchestrated by her parents, Ezzat (Ali Suliman) and Mervat (Kinda Alloush). Ezzat, a former champion swimmer, has become a demanding coach to Yusra and her older sister, Sara; he toasts Yusra’s sporting abilities while Sara wanders into another room and watches a television news report on government protests elsewhere in Damascus.

 

Flash-forward four years. Sara and Yusra (now played by real-life sisters Manal and Nathalie Issa) revel at an outdoor penthouse nightclub where their cousin Nizar (Ahmed Malek) is DJing. They dance blithely, apparently oblivious to the bombs raining down in the distance: a bizarrely callous, modern-day version of fiddling while Rome burns.

 

The dynamic between these sisters is complex; they clearly love and are devoted to each other, but tension is palpable. Sara has become a wild child: reckless, headstrong, unwilling to respect authority. She also  has abandoned her swimming training. Manal Issa gives her a mocking, defiant gaze, as if daring the world to get in her way.

 

Yusra is quieter, cautious and nurturing: forever trying to protect her older sister from her worst instincts. Yusra has maintained her swim training, fixated on one day competing in the Olympics. Nathalie Issa’s expression is frequently troubled, her eyes wide and worried, her posture suggesting vulnerability.