Heart of Stone: Netflix recently released this, to much fanfare and a cast that is decent. Principally starring Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman). This movie tries REALLY hard to be Mission Impossible, James Bond and Jason Bourne rebooted with Gadot as the lead character. Sadly for all it’s best intentions, I can hear the pitch meeting in my head, it doesn’t deliver. You are better off on Netflix to rewatch the earlier and more recent Mission Impossible movies. The story is all too familiar with a device with more power than one should ever have put into one person’s hands and the various spy agencies doing their best to get a hold of it. A quality actress like Glenn Close is woefully under-utilized, even though she tried to channel Meryl Streep’s look in The Devil Wears Prada in this.
Jamie Dornan (from the Fifty Shades of Grey series and also The Fall) is in the cast, and Alia Bhatt, and Jing Lusi who looks eerily like Olivia Munn in the opening sequence of this film. I like the set pieces in Lisbon and also Iceland which are familiar friends, but there is so much that is very silly. The stunts aren’t at the same level as Cruise in MI. A good example is the parachuting scene. But you could also add the motorcycle scene as well. We have seen it all before, and done better. The whole agent acts-as-a-double-agent falls flat, and I cannot believe that the technology for following around and viewing remotely the actions of the spies is in any way plausible. Is that true of other stunts and other movies in this genre? Of course! But as the audience viewing it, I don’t want to feel as though it’s a fake as it looks at times in this. The writing and the story are not the same calibre and overall it simply doesn’t capture my attention, or keep it. To its credit, it isn’t three hours long, but that really isn’t a high bar to hold it up to.
Gal Gadot does her best and can do physical stunts very well. Jing Lusi cannot hold a candle to Ana De Armas in Bond. Overall it feels like a the B-Team on virtually all fronts with writing, stunts, CGI, villian in comparing to the others. So for that, I would suggest that this isn’t the movie to watch. If you really like Gal Gadot, then perhaps watching Wonder Woman again.
65: It was a tough week. Crave recently released the prehistoric themed movie that doesn’t involve genetic manipulation, like Jurassic Park, 65 with Adam Driver, with the 65 referencing 65 million years ago. Driver with a wife and young daughter, has decided to take “one last job” to assist in getting money for some needed expensive medical assistance for his daughter. Query whether a father would head off on some mission with a sick daughter. I doubt I could do it. But that doesn’t make much of a movie. On the mission there is a catastrophic ship failure because he has never listened to C-3PO in Star Wars in that you don’t ever go INTO an asteroid field. The odds of surviving are astronomical, and Adam Driver isn’t Han Solo. His ship crashes down onto an unknown planet, but thankfully it has breathable atmosphere. Phew! Another really short movie if it doesn’t. But wait, also on his ship, and someone else who survives the crash is a young passenger. She is looking to reunite with her family.
Cue the references to The Last of Us. In fact, much of this feels like the successful HBO series, which incidentally is far better than this is. One challenge for me that is simply annoying is Driver’s inability to communicate with the young girl. Of course, different worlds, different planets, different countries one can expect different languages. But we have dinosaurs running around, could we suspend the realism of a language barrier and allow them to talk to one another? Please?! As for the dinosaurs, time and again things happen right at the last moment that is very convenient. All this to say that overall this movie for me was a mess. I found it silly and disjointed. I didn’t care for the characters despite the attempts to make this feel more like Interstellar and connect with the Matthew McConoughay character leaving Murphy. So I cannot recommend and would actively encourage readers not to view this if available to you.
Mondays With Robbie 