Heart of Stone Could Benefit to Learn From the Bourne and Bond Franchises

Heart of Stone is a promising spy thriller starring Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone, but could've borrowed a page from the James Bond and Bourne franchises.

Hollywood has certainly been leaning hard into the spy thriller genre in 2023, with even the streaming services getting in on the act. Prime Video had the Citadel series, while Netflix had an international war brewing in The Gray Man. Now, the latter streamer is exploring the tale of Gal Gadot's Rachel Stone in Heart of Stone.

This film has Rachel as part of a secret society known as the Charter, whose agents infiltrate other watchdog groups such as MI6 to ensure governments don't abuse their power. Unfortunately, Heart of Stone has too many rudimentary arcs and clichés that feel so overdone by now. The film, however, have pulled more from two popular franchises that focused on substance and style: the Jason Bourne and James Bond film series.

Heart of Stone Needed a More Character-Driven Approach

Most of Heart of Stone mimics what other action movies are doing. From the hand-to-hand combat of John Wick, to the car chases a la Fast & Furious, to the overall tone of Extraction and Mission: Impossible, it all blurs into one mishmash. These tropes prevent Heart of Stone from feeling original, imaginative, and having its own identity.

Giving Heart of Stone a more original storyline is essential if it's to make Rachel as much of an iconic spy hero as her male counterparts. The James Bond movies starring Daniel Craig -- even the least celebrated ones -- shifted away from the playboy energy to a narrative exploring Bond's past and family. This resulted in a more nuanced and vulnerable hero, which is something the Jason Bourne movies capitalized on as well. This was especially noted when the Bourne movies revealed the truth about Jason becoming a spy, the family he lost and how he was used as a dog of war.

In Rachel's case, a lot of this depth is missing from the heroine. There's no backstory, apart from one throwaway line that the Charter found her in her wayward days. They turned her into a focused weapon, which proved to be an important part of her history. Yet, the way she conveys this to Keya (Alia Bhatt) doesn't have any emotive weight. This really stands out considering this revelation is supposed to be the catalyst for Keya to betray the villains and join Rachel's team by the end of Heart of Stone.

Heart of Stone Lacks Connective Depth

To cite another example, the Mission: Impossible franchise has improved the character development for Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt. The more recent installment, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, Part One, gave more insight into Ethan's past and why he joined the Impossible Mission Force (IMF). Extraction 2 also tried to provide more backstory for Tyler Rake's blood-soaked career. This isn't to say a prequel is needed for Rachel, or that the movie needs to dwell on her past. Still, showing some details of her past would make her feel like a more complete character.

In Heart of Stone, Rachel talks to Keya about family, and even hurts when her MI6 associates are betrayed and killed. However, no flashbacks of Rachel's past are shown to add context this pain. The Daniel Craig Bond movies perfected the art of filling in the details of Bond's past, and fleshing out why he'd go rogue and why part of him did want to escape the spy life and have a family. This lifted the bar away from the property's typical missions, kills and random hook-ups. The Bourne movies similarly adopted that direction as well, making fans feel for a Jason Bourne whose mind got fractured, and who desperately tried to exit the game and start a new life. This presented him as something more than an assassin cog in the proverbial spy machine.

In short, Bond's and Bourne's stories speak to love, agony and redemption. Their movies show all the necessary moments in their lives that informed who they became or why they wanted to change. It's why those films have become the gold standard for spy thrillers. Sadly, by not using this same approach to flesh out the lead heroine, Heart of Stone sells its lead short, making its story generic and most lacking that fundamental sense of humanity.