Starring: Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt, Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighöfer, Jing Lusi, Paul Ready, Jon Kortajarena
OUR RATING: ★★☆☆☆
Story:
Netflix spy action thriller directed by Tom Harper. Heart of Stone (2023) centers on CIA agent Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot), the only woman who stands between her powerful, global, peace-keeping organization, and the loss of its most valuable and dangerous asset.
Where to Watch:
Best Quotes
Bailey: [referring to Rachel] Four hours in the van, and she’s eaten all the crisps.
Parker: Well, she’s stuck in there with you, so that’s comfort eating.
Parker: Have you been boring her with your cat chat again?
Bailey: Cat chat? Actually, Parker, she likes my Barry the Cat stories. You like my Barry the Cat stories, right? Before you know it, you’re going to want one of your own.
Rachel Stone: Cats hate me. Sorry, Bailey.
Casanova: Hello, beautiful. May I take this seat?
Rachel Stone: Take it anywhere you like.
Keya Dhawan: MI6, right? You guys really need to work on your subtlety. You ruined my party. I should’ve listened to the voices in my head. “The British are coming. The British are coming.”
Jack of Hearts: The Heart has a chance of success at just thirty-two percent.
Rachel Stone: Not helping, Jack.
Jack of Hearts: Stone, big drop coming up. Big drop.
Rachel Stone: How big?
Jack of Hearts: The mother of big. Really, really big.
Jack of Hearts: Chance of success just plummeted.
Rachel Stone: Only because you’ve got no imagination.
Casanova: We meet again. Must be destiny.
Rachel Stone: Must be.
[knocks him out and takes his snowmobile]
Jack of Hearts: Chance of success to eighty-five percent.
Rachel Stone: Only eighty-five percent? Hardly seems fair.
Parker: I take full responsibility.
Control: “I. I. I.” That’s your problem, Parker.
Parker: Paperwork. Excellent. That’ll show Mulvaney’s lads who’s boss.
Yang: What did you do when I left you up there?
Rachel Stone: Hid in the toilets. What? You said to stay out of sight.
Bailey: Ex-intelligence operatives answering only to themselves. No national allegiances, no political leanings. Putting out fires their governments never allowed them to. That’s the Charter. The most highly trained agents working together to keep peace in a turbulent world.
Parker: No. That is a Saturday morning cartoon. Nobody knows about the Charter because they don’t exist.
Parker: Sorry, Bailey, there is no secret genius organization pulling all the strings. It’s just us, Sandra, and her paperwork.
Rachel Stone: But it was a nice bedtime story.
Rachel Stone: Sneaking up on me?
Parker: A field agent should be ready for anything.
'You want to know how great men get power? It's not because they earn it, or because they deserve it. It is because when the moment comes, they take it.' - Parker (Heart of Stone) Share on X
Rachel Stone: So, rules are rules unless they apply to you.
Parker: Why do I feel like you know me better than I know you? Maybe I should listen to one of these dreary podcasts of yours.
Ivo: That’s the peacock. Came with the house.
Rachel Stone: How’s King of Hearts? Is she angry?
Jack of Hearts: Have you seen her yet?
Nomad: Well, let’s see. You lost control of the situation, target is dead, then you had to kill six men. What a glorious outcome. Victoria Crosses all around.
Rachel Stone: Love what you’ve done with the place.
Nomad: Is she developing a sense of humor?
Nomad: The Heart’s better at whats than whys.
Rachel Stone: It doesn’t feel right. Keya chose to hack into our comms feed on the mountain. She revealed herself to me, looked me straight in the eye.
Jack of Hearts: I’m not sure if we should ignore the Heart, the closest mankind has to perfect intelligence, because of eye contact in a bar.
Rachel Stone: This might be why you’re single, Jack.
Nomad: I’m tracking my asset. You know what you signed up for. No relationships. No friends. No poolside tête-à-tête. What we do is too important. When governments fail, the only thing left is the Charter.
Rachel Stone: Everything’s under control.
Nomad: Good. Keep it that way.
Parker: Bailey, you should meet my gran. She has the same taste in music, and you have the same hair.
Bailey: It’s my van, my tunes.
Parker: Yeah, that’s what she says.
'If we only follow the odds, then we'll never do anything in spite of the odds.' - Rachel Stone (Heart of Stone) Share on X
Yang: Parker, this music is ancient. What are you, a hundred years old?
Parker: It’s called culture.
Rachel Stone: I’m going back in.
Jack of Hearts: What? No. Saving them is not your mission. Get out of there.
Rachel Stone: Jack, please.
Jack of Hearts: No. At best, you break cover. Most likely, you die.
Yang: [referring to the van’s remote key] Does that thing ever work?
Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. It works. Just not on every car.
Yang: Okay, Stone. Time to start talking. You hack, you fight, and you drive.
Bailey: Three vehicles. Lots of guns!
Rachel Stone: Yeah, I can tell by the bullets.
Parker: Are you trying to kill us?
Rachel Stone: Pretty much the opposite, actually.
Rachel Stone: This might be kind of intense.
Yang: Who the hell are you?
Rachel Stone: It’s complicated.
Parker: Well, from where I’m sitting, a baby agent from IT just took out an entire kill team.
Bailey: The Charter’s real.
Yang: And you’re one of them.
Rachel Stone: Look, I wish I could’ve told you more. But we all want the same thing.
Parker: [as he shoots and kills Bailey and Yang] No, we don’t. You’re not the only one with a secret.
Rachel Stone: Who are you, Parker?
Parker: Why don’t you ask the Heart?
Rachel Stone: If you wanted me dead, you would have shot me first.
Parker: Still a few things I need to know. About you, the Charter. But perhaps most of all, I was looking forward to a fight.
Parker: [to Rachel] Keya and I learned that the Charter infiltrated MI6. I had to flush out who. At first, I thought it was Yang, but I was so pleased it was you.
Parker: Your hand’s shaking.
Rachel Stone: You barely nicked me.
Parker: That was the point. Poison-tipped. A little basic, I know, but it hits the spot.
Parker: I spent six years looking for you people, Stone. Then fate brings you straight to me. You’re a very good agent. But you were so busy letting a machine think for you that you missed me. Right here, in front of your face, the whole time.
Mulvaney: The Heart is what gives the Charter its power. It’s the most formidable weapon you never knew existed. It can hack into anything, anywhere. Cell phones, power grids, the banks, governments, military, health records. Your secrets. It knows you better than you know yourself. It’s determinism. With access to trillions of data points at once, its modeling is so accurate it can predict the future. The Heart is knowledge and power.
Mulvaney: If you own the Heart, you own the world.
Parker: I’ve loved working with you, Rachel. Hand on heart.
Rachel Stone: We need to shut it all down now.
Nomad: Shut what down? The Heart?
Rachel Stone: Until we know what they’ve done. We have no idea what they’re capable of.
Jack of Hearts: But we don’t need to shut it down to find out what they’ve done. We’d just be harming ourselves.
Rachel Stone: We don’t know them. She’s not stupid.
Jack of Hearts: And neither are we.
Rachel Stone: Are you sure about that?
Rachel Stone: I told you. I knew Keya was playing us, playing the Heart.
Nomad: No, you didn’t. No, you didn’t. You had a feeling. Nothing concrete. Nothing actionable. A mood, a notion, a hunch, a bollocks. We don’t trade in those.
Nomad: You ignored the Heart, and you went back in.
Rachel Stone: To save my team!
Nomad: They weren’t your team. They died anyway. You going back made sure of that. You blew your cover!
Rachel Stone: So I should’ve just listened to the Heart?
Nomad: Yes. The Charter exists for one reason. To maximize lives saved. That’s the only moral metric there is. And it’s a calculation. A pure and objective calculation.
Rachel Stone: Made for us by a machine.
Nomad: Have you forgotten how radical that is? It doesn’t mean that what we do is easy or feels nice. You will have the voices of those people in your head for the rest of your life. And you will never not feel responsible for them ever. But the end justifies the means.
Rachel Stone: I spent every day with Parker for a year and didn’t see it coming.
Nomad: No. Neither did the Heart.
Nomad: I’m standing you down, Rachel. Go home. Get some rest. Keep your head down. Don’t do anything stupid.
Rachel Stone: You can’t do this.
Nomad: You’re compromised.
Rachel Stone: So, I’m just out.
Nomad: It’s about the greater good. It’s nothing personal.
Rachel Stone: No. I’m starting to see that.
Keya Dhawan: [to Rachel] So, why is a Charter agent riding around all alone, just hours after being poisoned? Doesn’t feel like they’re taking care of their most valuable player.
Keya Dhawan: I bet you used to think we were so alike. Now you know I’m better.
Rachel Stone: Better? You killed my friends.
Keya Dhawan: What?
Rachel Stone: You didn’t know, huh? Well, I told you this wasn’t a game, Keya. Heart or no Heart, I’m coming for you.
Parker: [to Keya] Let me remind you, the Charter don’t give two s**ts about people like Bailey and Yang. So, if you want us to succeed, you shouldn’t either.
Keya Dhawan: We’ll have about eight minutes to get in, take the Heart, and get out again before they regain control.
Lieutenant Gamal: Very precise. You’re sure?
Keya Dhawan: No. I’ll be sure when it descends. If they found my code, it won’t descend, they’ll be waiting for us, and we all die.
Jack of Hearts: We’ve lost the Heart.
Nomad: Not yet.
Parker: [to Rachel] Shame about your parachute. You’ll be needing that.
Keya Dhawan: [to Rachel] So, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to secret-agent our way back to civilization, and I’m going to follow three steps behind you with this gun.
Rachel Stone: If I shoot you now, all this is over. Show you the same mercy you showed Bailey and Yang.
Keya Dhawan: It’s the logical play, Rachel. It’s what the Heart would tell you to do.
Rachel Stone: I’m not like you.
Rachel Stone: So, you get to tear the whole world down?
Keya Dhawan: Oh, this is not just for me. It’s for people like me. Parker’s going to destroy the Charter. I’ve got my whole naughty list, and we’re going to expose them all.
Rachel Stone: With no thought of what comes next. You’re a child.
Keya Dhawan: And you think the Charter’s any better? Just because they saved you doesn’t make them good.
Keya Dhawan: Always a rebel. Always a problem. Violent, alone, helpless.
Rachel Stone: Stop.
Keya Dhawan: Until the Charter comes along, right? And gives you that discipline that you so clearly crave. But did they take you in because you were good? Or because you were broken?
Rachel Stone: Maybe I was broken. But there’s a woman I know only as Nomad. She rescued me, trained me, showed me what’s possible when there’s someone watching your back.
Keya Dhawan: They’ll keep us alive for ransom. We reel them in, and then bam. Just to be clear, the “bam” is for you to take them out.
Rachel Stone: Yeah, I get that.
Rachel Stone: I take it I’m no longer compromised.
Nomad: Well, they have the Heart, so we’re all a little compromised.
Jack of Hearts: If the Heart wants to find us, it will.
Parker: The Charter never worries about who gets in their way, and neither will we.
Parker: [to Keya] You’re still not seeing the bigger picture. This isn’t about some pi**y little grievance you had with the bad man who killed your mom and dad. This is about power. Concentrated in the hands of the few, of the very, very few who could use it for good, who could actually make a change, but they don’t.
Parker: We’ve been used and manipulated our whole lives. Now it’s time for us to take control.
Rachel Stone: Keya. She shut down the Heart.
Nomad: How do you know she’s not playing you?
Rachel Stone: I don’t.
Rachel Stone: [referring to Keya] I believe her, Nomad. I’d be dead too if I hadn’t listened to her. I trust her, and you need to trust me.
Parker: I have the Heart, and I have the Kings. That’s a winning hand.
Parker: I’ve served my entire life, Rachel, and none of it mattered. The world is still in chaos. The Heart has the power to change everything. But the Charter are using it to keep things exactly as they are.
Rachel Stone: You don’t want to change anything. You just want to be the one in charge. First thing you did with all that power was kill people.
Rachel Stone: The problem with men like you, Parker, is that your power is only ever based on threats and violence. And when you brutalize everyone around you, even your own team, you’ll never have the one thing I know I always will.
Parker: Yeah? And what is that, Rachel?
Rachel Stone: Someone to watch my back.
Parker: [as he’s dying] Maybe in the next life.
Rachel Stone: See you when I get there.
Keya Dhawan: I decided to embrace the cliché and use my time in jail to get ripped.
Rachel Stone: You’ve had worse goals.
Keya Dhawan: So my lawyers tell me.
Rachel Stone: The Heart’s an amazing tool. But that’s all it is. If we only follow the odds, then we’ll never do anything in spite of the odds.
Keya Dhawan: And what if the odds tell you to do nothing?
Rachel Stone: That’s when they send me.
Rachel Stone: I liked my team, Keya. I miss them. I want to surround myself with people who will change the world for good.
Rachel Stone: How we doing, Jack?
Jack of Hearts: Good news and bad news. The good news, I’ve scouted the square, and your plan just might work. The bad news, they were out of oat milk.
Rachel Stone: Did we get into the power grid?
Keya Dhawan: Yeah. It wasn’t that hard, because their password was “password”.
Keya Dhawan: Go give them the bam.
Rachel Stone: Always.