“Heart of Stone” is a science fiction story with references to contemporary society that highlights the importance of cybersecurity. This is the terrain of “Heart of Stone“, an action movie that, in the minds of the scriptwriters and producers, should become a saga along the lines of Mission Impossible. This title is the primary reference for the film directed by Tom Harper and written by Greg Rucka and Allison Schroeder, starring Gal Gadot as an intelligence agent working for a powerful international organisation that must maintain global peace.

The spies and the heart

In the Italian Alps, an MI6 team is on the trail of an arms dealer. Still, after capturing him, he swallows cyanide and dies, getting the British intelligence service agents into trouble. For the team, there is immediately a new mission in Lisbon, where the spies go to capture a girl linked to the trafficker, but as soon as they arrive, they end up victims of an assault by unknown enemies.

Amid shootouts, hand-to-hand combat, miraculous rescues and reckless driving in the city centre, new recruit Rachel Stone (played by Gal Gadot), who had presented herself as a technology expert, hints that she is more experienced, skilled and prepared than her three veteran companions. So she is forced to confess who she is and what she does, revealing that she works undercover for Charter, a secret organisation that intervenes in every part of the world to stop terrorists and any other threat that endangers peace.

A fine connoisseur of cryptography and digital surveillance, Rachel is able to breach any protection system with the help of the Heart, a quantum supercomputer capable of instantly processing trillions of data, predicting all kinds of events and people’s reactions, as well as hacking all types of electronic devices. In essence, it is the most powerful weapon in the world, and whoever controls it has the world at its feet.

The job of the spy who double-crosses MI6 is to keep Heart safe from the many enemies who yearn to conquer it. For this, the Charter has placed the Heart’s physical core inside an airship 25,000 metres above the ground, which is always in motion and, therefore, impossible to stop.

Hacking, in cinema as in reality 

The movie’s plot revolves around the Heart and the need for it not to fall into the wrong hands. It is science fiction, of course, but it is also a simile for our society because today, technology determines power. The intertwining of digital surveillance, artificial intelligence and quantum computers is as relevant as it gets in today’s evolution of technological development. With the potential to solve problems that are intractable today, quantum computers are at the top of the investments of Google, IBM and Microsoft. To get an idea, one only needs to know that 2022 venture capitalists invested a record $1.8 billion in companies and startups working on quantum computing hardware and software. Cybersecurity is even more central as hackers continue to increase and breach the defence systems of small and large companies, governments, and authorities. A risk that has become a global threat to everyone.

Heart of Stone

In “Heart of Stone,” Rachel Stone and her antagonist Keya Dhawan precisely can breach the security systems of secret, theoretically, inviolable organisations that determine the twists and turns that repeatedly overturn the power relationship between the warring factions. Here we are in the movies, and everything is exaggerated. Still, we know that for many years all governments have created specialised cybersecurity teams to protect their data and to try to intercept that of others. Because policy today is dictated by tech evolution and the ability to have effective countermeasures to defend one’s sensitive information.

A film that will not go down in history

“Heart of Stone” is certainly not the best spy story you can see; honestly, it is far from a must-see film. It does not shine in terms of originality and is far too predictable for genre lovers. Between jumps from planes, fights in the sky and improbable chases, there are too many absurd scenes, with actors who do not shine in sequences that drag on without creating genuine pathos. It is a pity that Netflix has invested so much money in an impalpable project, a poorly executed clone of Mission Impossible, which I really hope will not have a sequel as planned before the film’s availability on streaming.

Three films and documentaries on hackers to watch

It is best to look elsewhere if one is looking for stories about hackers. You can start with “Snowden“, Oliver Stone’s biopic about the former CIA computer scientist, or go for “The Face of Anonymous“, a portrait of Commander X, the iconic and divisive hacker active in North America. “Blackhat”, on the other hand, is a spy movie with the usual good-guy-bad-guy scheme with Chris Hemsworth directed by Michael Mann, which shows the consequences that hackers can trigger in the economic and social field.

Although a little dated (2015) compared to the rapid evolution of technology, seeing it helps to understand why cybersecurity has taken a central role in society. Bearing in mind that, although partly fictionalised, the film tells the true story of Stuxnet. This virus 2010 hacked the security systems of many industrial companies and almost a fifth of Iran’s nuclear facilities, the origin of which has never been identified.