James Bond, Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt: There's a new spy making her action movie debut and she's ready to save the world in a new way. Gal Gadot stars in Netflix's upcoming thriller Heart of Stone, and director Tom Harper tells EW he hopes it's just the beginning of a new female-led action franchise.
"There were a couple of things that immediately stood out to me, the first being that it was an original film in a genre that's full of great franchises, but things that have been around for a long time: Mission: Impossibles or Bonds or the Bournes," says Harper. "I love those movies, but they've all been around for decades, so to work on something that was an addition to that genre, but an original piece of material, it felt really exciting and it was a real opportunity. And I also loved the fact that that had a female lead at the center. Unintended pun.
Director: Tom Harper
Writers: Greg Rucka, Allison Schroeder
Stars: Gal Gadot, Matthias Schweighöfer, Jamie Dornan
Heart of Stone centers on elite agent Rachel Stone (Gadot), who hides a secret even bigger than her career at MI6: she is the only woman standing between an ultra-mysterious, powerful, global, and peacekeeping, the Charter, and the loss of its most valuable and dangerous asset, the Heart.
Building a new action franchise around a female agent was something Harper felt was long overdue, which is why he (along with writers Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder) felt a responsibility to design the mission specifically in I turn to her
"That's something we've rarely seen in that genre," he adds. "What Gal and [the producers of] Skydance talked about a lot was that they wanted Rachel to be a character that wasn't just an actress playing some kind of male character, but a female at the center who responded differently." "Often in spy action thrillers, you have a central character who is tasked with saving the world, and the world rests only on their shoulders and they have to defeat everyone else and come out on top. That It's partly true in Heart of Stone, but also at the heart of it all is that she needs to trust the relationships and trust that she builds with other characters. It's a team effort, and that struck a chord with me."
Playing on Rachel's humanity and desire to lean on her team runs through the entire movie. "Even the strongest among us need to work as a team to overcome adversity, and it's not just about being alone," says Harper. That's why she hopes that Heart of Stone will continue in future movies. "There's a lot of things I'd like to explore more with Rachel in that regard. There's a lot of rich territory with Rachel, with the Heart, with the Card. Ultimately, we have to see how well she does and see how people like her. But I'm excited about it."
Harper is also eager for audiences to see Gadot showcase a new side of her action star skill set in this film. "He's obviously worked on the biggest movies, whether it's Wonder Woman, or Fast & Furious, or even Red Notice to some degree," she says. "She and I really wanted to make this a character more grounded in this world so that she was relatable, that she was human, that she bleed. She has emotions, she finds things difficult. It's not easy. The relationships were real and there was always a kind of of emotional reality at all times.
That also translated into the action scenes, seamlessly blending cutting-edge technology with practical stunts, which were filmed on location in Italy, Iceland, Morocco, England and Portugal.
“We do some extreme things within the film, but we've tried to keep it as close to reality as possible while still maintaining that elevated action feel,” says Harper. "What I really love about movies like this when it works is, yes, you have the emotion and the spills and the action, but it can also be two actors in a room facing each other, head to toe. That's something that works." here, you see that from Gal, and she makes it really beautiful."
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