Heart of Stone: Why the main character ruins the movie

Heart of Stone is Netflix’s latest attempt at creating a franchise, akin to what they did with The Old Guard (which was also produced by Skydance). Though, unlike The Old Guard, this wasn’t as successful as it got mediocre reviews. And part of why it failed, in my opinion, was due to the movie’s main character, Rachel Stone (played by Gal Gadot).

Now, the first question, and why the main character doesn’t work is: “Who is Rachel Stone?” Well, she’s the protagonist of our movie and she’s a James Bond-esque super spy working undercover for MI6. She’s in reality, a member of the charter, a group of spies with no allegiance to any nation or political wing (basically Netflix’s answer to the IMF). She was also a rebellious kid, having been kicked out of several schools before being taken in by Nomad (played by Sophie Okonedo), who trained her to be a spy and recruited her into the Charter.

And that’s all we know about her. No, seriously. That’s it. What about personality? Ummm…………… She’s cool, she’s still rebellious but plays it off in a James Bond-esque way. And that’s it. She’s just a James Bond wannabe.

Gal Gadot’s performance does not help matters at all. I loved her performance as Wonder Woman and I’m sorry to say this but her performance has zero personality charisma and even emotion. Tom Cruise’s performance as Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible series has a human personality and emotions, which makes him easier to root for. Gal’s performance, apart from a couple of scenes, doesn’t have that. Her voice even sounds a bit monotone, devoid of any emotion. I know she’s trying to be James Bond but there can only be one James Bond. It would have been better if she had tried to be more original with her character than try to rip off both James Bond and Ethan Hunt.

Looking into the other characters, I was honestly more invested in the MI6 team she was undercover with. The two characters I’m about to mention both have more personality with one having slightly more backstory than Rachel has ever had. And yet they’re both dead by the first half of the film. I’m not going to mention the third member (Parker) because he’s the antagonist and he’s bland as cardboard.

Alright, here we go.

First off is Max Bailey, portrayed by Paul Ready (Utopia, Motherland). He’s a driver and comms operative, so he stays in the van with Stone. He’s quite a chummy guy and has a wife, daughter and an orange tabby cat named Barry, stories of whom he regales to Rachel. He is also a conspiracy theorist as he believes in the existence of the charter, though his theories get laughed off.

Ok, wow. Already, we have a slightly more interesting character than Rachel.

Second is Theresa Yang, played by Jing Lusi (Crazy Rich Asians). She is a skilled agent, quite the sharpshooter and works in the field with Parker. She’s more akin to Rachel, though in my opinion, she has more personality and charisma than either Rachel or Parker combined. It got to the point where I wished that she was the main character of the movie or at the very least, was cast as Rachel.

But alas, we have Rachel Stone as our protagonist and the previous stuff would be forgivable if she got a shred of a character arc or some development. But nope, we don’t get a shred of it. Apart from one scene where Rachel visits Bailey’s empty house and mourns his death and takes his cat to his wife and daughter, that’s it. She stays the same character throughout the entire movie. She doesn’t get better, we don’t learn much about her, nothing.

I know Gal Gadot decided to make this movie because of a lack of female-led action movies, which is not a bad motivation. That being said though, considering how we’ve gotten movies such as Atomic Blonde, Kate, Salt, Hanna, Alita Battle Angel, Sicario, Widows, Hunger Games series, Divergent, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, etc (all of which came before Heart of Stone was even released), it doesn’t seem like a new thing anymore as the selling point. And nor is her character.